Warlord's Invasion (Starfight Book 1) Page 13

  At times like this, she wished that one person were here, the one she could confide in like no other. But Captain Willock was not that person by a long shot. Willock was Willock, and he wasn’t someone who could hold her heart, or on a subliminal level, her soul if the shit hit the fan. The man in the hospital bed was a realist, but he was also a battle tested veteran who had been with her through every hardship, from frail edge-of-defeat to victory. A person who had shared every triumph to every heartbreak.

  ...A person who she should have married if he wasn’t afflicted by a blind divine curse that he could only be physically attached to members of his own gender. She hated the luck of the draw. His direction was her own misfortune.

  “Admiral, can I be of an assistance?” Willock asked from in the seat next to her.

  “I don’t think so, Captain.”

  “Please, I’ve observed my new flag officer long enough to know when she’s troubled. Admiral.”

  But you’re not him. “What can I say?” She smiled. “I’m glad you are capable of that. But even then, there’s very little you can do.”

  “Try me, ma’am.”

  Vier nodded. “I think a large amount of this fleet could be in jeopardy. Millions of spacers could die.”

  “Yet, you’ve done everything you could to prevent that potential mistake, ma’am.”

  “I have.”

  “Yet, you still feel terrible of this outcome that hasn’t been set in concrete, correct?”

  “I do.”

  “It’s a similar feeling felt by thousands, perhaps millions of officers before you. But in the end, the chain of command is the only thing that keeps the universe and our world together. Ma’am, if you can’t believe in the wellness of a decision, your only choice is to believe in the necessity of that decision. Decisions are frail things based on an infinite set of bits of information, but the belief that one must follow the decision made by those superior to you is the only lasting sanctuary in military custom.”

  Vier blinked. She didn’t know her flag captain thought like that. “Safe haven or not, I don’t believe we can win a war when the enemy knows our strengths and weaknesses and we cannot do the reverse, Captain.”

  Willock was silent. He stared at the hologram map with such a constant eye, as if he wasn’t thinking about the little dots but the organism as a whole.

  Well…that’s what she thought he was thinking.

  He remained silent for a minute. Finally, he said, “Then there is only the inevitability and blind fortune. Ma’am.”

  Vier thought the idea was cryptic, until he smiled, that same casual smile that the female ensigns thought of in a furiously attractive way. What he meant, or what she thought he meant, was that even if we have no power over our destiny, destiny itself could shape to our benefit with the slightest of fortunes. The small details within a larger framework could slowly but irrevocably change even the dimmest picture. It was rule of the Compound Effect, that small changes could have large repercussions. To her, it meant that even if the world around her could possibly turn into hell, she could, in as frank a truth as the possibility of the negative outcome coming true, be witness to it eventually turning around with what meager fortunate events fate gave her.

  She liked it, but she had to be receptive of these events. She had to observe carefully, and catch it when it came even in the most subtle manner.

  She smiled, gazing at her flag captain with a new but profound respect. Maybe her flag captain wasn’t lacking compared to her old captain, after all. He just had a different set of strengths.

  Emblem of Clan Dorat – Ferocity and Loyalty

  Ka's First Fleet, Main Group

  Supreme Battlecruiser Usha'Tera…

  “We have arrived, subjugator.”

  Hal-Dorat grunted in approval, staring at the holoscreen in anticipation. What he had thought to be a minor recon force had become a full blown fleet. Probably more than 80% of the human’s entire sector assets. And to think the humans were cowards. The idea that humanity might finally find the courage to make a stand thrilled it him. It riled him with joy. While he’d fought in numerous wars against vast armadas, nothing outmatched the thrill of immediate battle. That the humans were outmatched in every arena meant little to him at this point. As the saying in the old tongue went, his fangs were sharpened. There was no purer emotion than sudden the exchange of might between two armies.

  The time was now.

  Hal-Dorat’s feline eyes scanned the holotank, taking in all the hidden force deployments he had kept out of the way of the humans’ recon probes. Yes, think like I am thinking, human. There is nothing in front of you but a mere fleet of sizable but not overwhelming enemy ships. Begin the assault, now. The enemy is not outmatched, but with clever tactics, you can win.

  Take the initiative and bring courage to your heart, human commander.

  From the data taken by assaulting human systems, he knew the human nullspace sensor range was outmatched by his own hypersensors. The humans could not, and will not, detect the other three Ga fleets hiding thirty light years behind him. Their sensor probes would be destroyed before they could detect his hidden ships. They would only see the 4700 Ga ships in front of them. Hal-Dorat made sure of that. Little did they know, that the total Ga presence within the region was eight times as much.

  Not that he would even need it with what he had planned.

  The seventeen hypercoreship squadrons was more than enough to do the work.

  With a mischievous grin, he sneered at the human kittens before him. They would fall, once they took the bait, and when they did, his ships could roam free in this sector without even the slightest fear...

  Betelgeuse Combined Fleet

  Flagship, Dreadnought Excalibur

  Flag Bridge…

  Vice Admiral…Lower Half, Mu Pei always hated the anxious adrenaline rush of battle. He was a planner at heart. While he could create the most elaborate and detailed instructions for his command to follow, he could not live in the moment, for he was someone who’d grown in a household filled with professors and students risen well into the highest ranks of academia. Throughout his early life, he had become accustomed to being a bookworm, for being able to painfully study everything concerning the subject in the most meticulous fashion. However, during the Military Reorganization Draft of 3947, the Office of Labor had offered him an incredibly large subsidy if he could convert from his profession as a researcher in neurobiology into a naval officer. Somehow, in the thousands of minute tests they had applied to everyone everywhere within the human sphere, he had been chosen as the ideal officer candidate. The fact that he was already fifty years old at the time of the draft meant little.

  Then…just as the tests predicted, he had done marvelously well for a fifty year old fresh-off-the-academy officer graduate. He had risen through the command ranks with diligence and pride that astonished his academia friends, and within fifty years, gathered numerous awards for bravery and aptitude in battle. But none of this, no history, no past personality measurement, could stop that feeling of nervousness that came with the onset of battle. He was not a coward. He’d been taught by higher ranking men and women, trained by the most qualified instructors on how to eliminate fear. But that raw feeling that sent waves of moisture to his palms never went away, no matter how much indoctrination. For some people, it was simply impossible.

  Sitting in the command chair, he was very aware of his fidgeting hands. He did the simplest thing any commander could do, he hid them underneath his sleeves.

  “Admiral Mu,” one of the sensor officers said, “T-sensors detect hyperwave neutrinos emanating from the forward enemy ships, should I alert the fleet of a possible hyperbeam spike?”

  The Excalibur’s sensor suite was more advanced than most battleships, but the data came from one of the sensor probes. The sensor net should have sent the data to every ship in the fleet. Mu Pei gazed at the readings on his own datapad. “Okay, go ahead and make a fleetwide alert. It wo
uld not hurt, but I am not certain the Cats know how to create an overcharged beam.”

  The idea of an overloaded hyperbeam had been theorized as early as the beginning of hyperbeam warfare. In the first centuries of hypertravel, the only possible means of attacking ships in hyperlight was through missiles equipped with h-space suspenders. But when hyperbeams were introduced, humanity now had two means of attacking an enemy ship. However, it did not take long before a third means was thought up. The hyperwave. A hyperbeam used the main polaron cannon on board a starship, but it was theoretically possible to overload the cannon to the point where instead of creating a narrow channel of warp destabilizing field, the cannon could instead create a wide wave. Almost nothing, no hyperdeflector could block a wave of this size. But the process involved pushing more power than was safely possible into the polaron cannon, which meant, in all cases done by experimental groups, that it would destabilize the origin ship’s own warp bubble because the polaron cannon would detonate in the process, creating warp destabilization fields inside the origin ship. Because it destroyed the origin ship’s polaron cannon, the theorized hyperwave could not be emitted at all. It would be destroyed in the same process that destroyed the polaron cannon.

  Although, the Cats may have found a way around that. Unlikely, since they haven’t demonstrated any of this technology in the numerous encounters so far, but nothing was impossible.

  Mu Pei fiddled with his sleeves. He was completely aware of the possibility that the Cats were hiding some unknown technology, despite what Admiral Kleingelt may believe. Mu Pei understood her concerns. He even understood what she thought of him, which was that he was too willing to overlook that possibility and wave the danger away, due to his desire to engage the Cats in an all-out battle that would determine the sector’s future.

  Yes, he knew the risks and the dangers, and none of it was enough to deflect him from committing his whole fleet. The fact of the matter was, there was just no solid proof that the Cats really did have something up their sleeve. If he was 100 percent sure that they were preparing a trap, he would of course, disengage from a massive assault. But he wasn’t even 20 percent sure. All he had were suspicions created by the caution of others based on how the enemy acted.

  In the realm of statistical probability, even if he assumed there was a 20percent certainty that the Cats were deceiving him, he had to go forward with the attack anyway. The reason being is that if humanity could not defeat the Cats with the technology they had, it was unlikely they ever would. If the Cats indeed had just an overwhelming advantage in h-space as well as in s-space, whether they were hiding it or not, the destruction of four thousand or so human warships early on in the war would mean very little to the war’s outcome. But if the Cats did not have such an overwhelming advantage, and were as they appeared, the loss of two hundred or more worlds in a week with more than 20 million civilians each, because he did not engage with his four thousand ships would be a significant, though not deadly, blow to humanity’s ability to win the war. However—certainly, if he did not counterattack now, the Cats could ultimately threaten the loss of Betelgeuse and its 18 billion civilians, and this would amount to a major blow to the war effort. The sector would be doomed.

  There was, of course, the possibility that in the future, humans could learn the alien’s technology through some means that hadn’t yet been discovered. The Cats so far, had detonated every ship that was assaulted by marines, making that route impossible, but it was uncertain whether 4000 human warships could be retrofitted with new technology or whether this new technology required new ships to be built from scratch. It would be much easier to learn the alien’s technology if the counterattack was successful. Human marines could retake systems the aliens previously conquered, but the success of that route would impact the war even less, because it would be already known that humans could defeat the aliens.

  That said, all in all, he was certain he had made the right choice to make an all-out counterattack. Uncertainty be damned. It was now up to fate.

  Gazing at his own holo-readouts, he gulped and shouted, “All ships, begin the assault!”

  The world obeyed his command.

  Betelgeuse Combined Fleet

  Dreadnought Beginner's Luck

  Bridge…

  SECTOR INTEL’s intelligence seemed to be right so far, Vier pondered as she watched the holomap. The enemy’s 4700 ships appeared as a gigantic spheroid with the forward facing surface flat against her and her allies. The 4900 human ships organized as a very thick concave lens. It was immediately obvious to Vier, as well as any battle tactician, that the ships in the forward sections would be in greatest risk. That was true in any battle, unless the technology gap was so wide that ships in front had no chance of being sunk. As Vier recalled, in a normal confrontation between conventional hyperlight combatants, there was an extreme chance that ships in the forward ten percent would be sunk in a battle of this size. The risks increased as the battle prolonged.

  By ordering the attack, it was, essentially, signing the death warrants of many officers and ratings in the forward surface. But sacrifices had to be made in order to reach greater gains. As a strategist, she knew that some of the biggest rewards required sacrificing some other less significant resource. To believe that four million lives were insignificant was tantamount to megalomania, but it was necessary.

  But that feeling—the feeling that this was a vain sacrifice just would not go away. Worse, the feeling that not only would the forward surface be sacrificed, but the entire fleet itself, stayed like a constant throb in the back of her mind.

  She cursed, massaging her scalp with her fingers through her cropped hair. In all her years of service, that danger sense had not dissipated. She could feel when something was wrong, she could sense it like a sixth sense. It stayed as a physical and emotional sensation in the back of her brain, making her on edge in a way that was completely different from the enormity of what was to come. It was suffocating. She had to do something about it. She knew what she did would probably be in vain, but it didn’t matter.

  On her chair, there was a button. She pressed it.

  Ten seconds later, a holoimage appeared next to her, showing Mu Pei’s head. “What is this about, admiral?” said Mu Pei.

  “I have to tell you. I have a very bad feeling about this...sir.”

  Mu Pei was silent for a moment. “You have told me that. My decision did not and will not change. Unless you have new information to back up your claim, I cannot withdraw from the attack.”

  “I have no new immediate facts other than those obscure neutrino emissions. But what I do have is this feeling.”

  “I cannot—”

  “You don’t understand, sir. This sudden feeling is never wrong. It is never wrong. Through all my years of service and all the conflicts I’ve been in, this feeling has always been there for me. It has saved my life and that of my command in countless situations. It has never been as strong as it is now. I can feel it coming, Admiral. I can feel them about to spring their trap.”

  Mu Pei was silent, again. “Emotions are based on a lot of things. But in your case, it has to be new data. What new information exactly are you basing this feeling on?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I can’t tell. At this moment, I don’t know where I’m getting the information or even what information I’m using to create this judgment. I just know it’s there and I have to do something about it. Maybe it’s based on old information. Maybe it’s the mixing of the current situation with what I already know. Maybe it’s their formation, or the way they’re moving, or just the existence of everything that has led up to here. I just know. Please, sir. Please.”

  Mu Pei tilted his head back. He seemed to gulp all she said in a distasteful manner. He raised his fingers to his chin and…

  Were his shaking? His hands were trembling.”Sir?”

  “I agree,” he said finally. “I believe your words and their judgment blindly even though every tactical thought
I know says I should go ahead with this attack.”

  Vier felt a wave of relief down her back. Suddenly, the blanket of misery in her scalp cleared away. “Why?”

  “Because you said it has never failed you.”

  “Okay. What will we do now, sir?”

  Mu Pei paused, thinking. “We will retreat. It is not too late.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Yes.” He nodded. “Because I believe in you. Despite our differences in opinion and mentality of our approaches, and our age and gender as well as socioeconomic background, we are on a team, and a team needs to trust other team members. I will delay the battle for one week and see what they do, and then…I will try to fight smaller battles in which the stakes are smaller but not insignificant like our scouting battles, to truly test their technology and strategy. That has always been my fall back plan in case I somehow, succumbed to your restraints, and I have. We will lose another dozen star systems almost immediately, of course. Now, I must relay orders to the other flag officers. Well done, admiral. Mu Pei out.” The hologram of Mu Pei’s head disappeared.

  Vier’s relief was counterbalanced by the shock of seeing what had been a stubborn commanding officer change so suddenly. What had changed in that elderly admiral? A sudden spark of empathy and consideration? Or was it truly a sudden leap of faith? Or was it...

  The fact of the matter was, she had fought 17 other flag officers and won. Everyone had been against her. But she had somehow changed everyone’s situation in the last moment by going to the leader. It was a relief, and if she thought too much about it, she could feel deluded with power.