Battle Force Read online

  “Are we going to have what it takes when we get to Atlantis, commander?”

  “We’re going to have to fight our way through Kraken first, sir,” O’Malley replied. “Our mission is to disrupt Sarn supply lines, starve the manufacturing colonies along the arm and take out at least one ammunition base in preparation for Southern Banner’s next move against the empire.”

  “Why are we going on the offensive?”

  “I can’t confirm Skywatch Command’s reasoning, sir, but I think we can safely assume we’re addressing some kind of threat,” O’Malley said. Jason felt a tinge of relief. What Cochrane had just said was exactly what Hunter was thinking. It was also the kind of thing a good XO would say. Perhaps this new arrangement would work out after all?

  “Agreed. What about the Proximans?” Hunter asked, eyebrows flattened.

  “They’ve been fighting an uphill battle in the Kraken sector for a year. We are going to level the playing field for them a little. They have a few heavy units left, but they are part of one hell of a battle-hardened fleet and the best shock troops in known space. Our fall-back is their listening post at the edge of the Rho Theta system.”

  “What is the empire’s next move?”

  “Admiral Powers wants us to provoke them into committing at least one battle group to the region,” Roarke said. “If we can hit them hard enough while staying far enough away from that mobile force, we will give Admiral Hafnetz her shot. The Saint Lucia and her group are heading up Task Force 151 out of El Rey. The admiral’s plan is to hit the ammunition base and any other targets of opportunity while the Sarn are occupied with us.”

  “So we’re the bait,” Hunter said. “Running and gunning.”

  “Affirmative,” O’Malley replied. “But we’re also the hidden knife. Our attacks must be as effective as possible. We don’t want the Sarn to know our group’s true capabilities until it’s too late.”

  “Your first run will cripple their supply lines. When the Sarn try to engage you, TF 151 will hit their forward position and knock out their reinforcements. The battle group will then retreat to engage Hafnetz, which will give your group an opening.”

  “I’m impressed, Mr. Roarke,” Hunter said as he stood and shook the administrator’s hand.

  “Why is that, captain?”

  “Because you seem to actually believe this plan will survive even thirty minutes after the first shot is fired.”

  Six

  Lieutenant Nessa Boyle was moving from station to station on the bridge of the destroyer Rhode Island. As the task force point unit, it was Boyle’s ship which was tasked with scouting out the Kraken Expanse before the main body arrived. As Rhode Island’s executive officer, it was Boyle’s job to make sense of what she was seeing.

  “This place is crawling with unidents. Tactical, you’ve got to get me something on Argent’s last position. Where along the frontier did you plot their last transponder contact?” Boyle had gradually been getting as sensitive to danger as her enigmatic captain. The still-new Delaware-class stealth destroyer was as lethal as ever, but their assignment now was thankfully a bit more conventional than the space warfare equivalent of chasing ghosts through the night with wooden stakes and holy water.

  “Best guess is two hundred megaclicks off the number seven repeater, ma’am,” the young tactical officer reported. “We have no residuals.”

  “And no messages? No drops?”

  The signals officer shook his head.

  Like Hunter’s new XO, Nessa Boyle was a details officer. She earned her keep by noticing what others didn’t, and she was a fine member of the class of bridge specialists who had established themselves as the future of Skywatch. It had long been said that enlisted men and women were the backbone of the fleet and the marine corps. It wasn’t long before it was pointed out the lieutenants were the brains.

  Boyle was one of the reasons her ship had gained the reputation it had. Rhode Island was the ship Skywatch called when it was time to perform some old fashioned mass homicide. Her specific role was the emerging military science field known as “Subspace Warfare.” The advent of more capable and cheaper stealth technology among the Core Alliance’s enemies made it necessary for Skywatch to find countermeasures. The Delaware-class destroyers were a first step in that direction. They fought like submarines in the ancient wet navies, using sophisticated electronic warfare techniques and convincing cloaking devices to turn space combat into a deceptive dance of sneaking silently and listening for clues. It turned out those capabilities also made Boyle’s ship a peerless scout and formidable spy.

  The difference between the Rhode Island and her enemies was that the larger destroyer wasn’t designed to approach by stealth and assassinate high-value targets. Captain Darragh Walsh’s ship was rather designed to kill the assassin before it got near its prey. The un-official name for the sleek new ship was “Ghost Killer.” Rhode Island’s current mission was to keep her flagship safe, and that was the main reason her captain and XO were maximum attentive to the fact that flagship and the battle group she was leading had disappeared from their scopes minutes ago.

  “Ma’am, I’m still reading the automated distress call from Oleander station.”

  “Very well, signals. Keep me advised if there are any changes.” Boyle activated the intra-ship. “SATCOM, Bridge. Still no contact with Argent. Request permission to approach the Kraken Effect.”

  “Negative, XO. We’re making some progress down here,” Captain Walsh replied. “I want our frequency board clear in case we receive flash traffic from the Proximans.”

  “All we have so far is the automated signal, sir.”

  “Understood. Hold position at the fourth repeater and direct all long-range tactical and organic sensors for maximum arc operation into the Effect. Report any unusual readings as soon as possible. Walsh out.”

  Boyle wasn’t entirely supportive of what she considered excessive caution, but she had also seen Darragh Walsh and his sixth sense in action, and there was no denying the man had long ago earned his nickname of “The Warlock.” Legend had it, at least among his opponents, that “you can’t see him, but he can see you.” The rumors about Rhode Island’s deadly track record had even reached various alien factions, and they were none too eager to square off with the darkly cloaked ship that resembled neither friend nor foe until it was too late.

  Seven

  Meanwhile, not far away, the escort frigate DSS Minstrel had problems of its own.

  “Keep your distance, helm. Steer a lateral course. Line minus thirty-five. Mark negative ten. Ahead one-half.”

  The chilled knot at the base of Josiah Winchester’s midsection told the story. There were at least five tracks on the relatively small ship’s tactical scope that were almost certainly Sarn warships. There were no discernible signals coming from the Proximan listening post at the edge of the Rho Theta system aside from the automated distress transmission. Ensign Grant was of the opinion the distress signal was either being faked, or it was being attenuated through Sarn antennas for the purpose of generating interference. The signal harmonics were drifting all over the spectrum and had been for the last six hours. There was an outside chance this formation was part of the battle group Hunter’s task force was supposed to avoid, and if that were true, the jig was up.

  The Minstrel’s XO had learned well his new role. The “Firecracker Frigate” and her unorthodox crew had been the difference in more than one battle so far, despite the escort warship’s light tonnage and small company. Captain Islington was revered among many of her fellow line officers for her daring impersonation of the battleship Argent’s captain during a crucial standoff with a Sarn squadron over Bayone. She, her crew and her ship formed a finely tuned instrument of war. But even that wasn’t sufficient to address what might be happening aboard the Proximan station. The facility was intended to be a safe harbor for Skywatch in the upcoming mission in and around the Kraken region, but if it had already been compromised, Argent and her escorts
could be flying into a trap. The fact that none of the advance ships could reach Argent only made things worse.

  One of the things Skywatch crews and commanding officers learned early in their careers was the virtue of discretion. Roaring in to encounters likely to lead to casualties, acts of war and other incidents best left to theory instead of debriefings was not advised. Minstrel was following those recommendations to the letter, and it was doing so on Islington’s explicit orders. Her other instructions were to notify her if confidence in enemy activity exceeded conventional limits. It had. The XO activated his commlink. He hesitated, knowing full well Rebecca hadn’t had more than a few hours of sleep in days.

  “Winchester to Captain.”

  “Islington here.” The response came too fast for someone who had been asleep.

  “Your orders were to notify you if–”

  “I’ll be up in a minute.”

  Winchester turned back to the screen. The vital operations of Skywatch hull FFG 840 continued like precision clockwork all around him. Though the bridge of an escort warship wasn’t nearly as luxurious as those found aboard ships of the line, it was nevertheless a utilitarian dream. Frigates only had four official bridge duty stations. Their consoles were designed around the universal interface adopted decades earlier to make starship electronics easier to repair and maintain. Minstrel was a fine example of that principle in action. Her bridge consisted of a pilot’s bank, tactical, signals and engineering. Each of the cardinal stations could be reconfigured to tie in to just about every system aboard the ship, and the principle of redundancy dictated that the nearly identical set of command consoles in the engineering section had virtually the exact same capabilities. There were credible theories among Skywatch ship designers and engineers that Minstrel’s bridge could be severed from the rest of the ship, and she would only lose a couple percentage points of combat effectiveness.

  While that inspired confidence in most, at the moment Minstrel’s ranking officer of the watch had his mind elsewhere. Winchester wasn’t prepared to log his findings yet, but his experience and training told him those five unidents were flying in formation, and that meant only one thing.

  “Captain on the bridge.”

  Lieutenant Commander Rebecca Islington was putting the finishing touches on a long ponytail. She was wearing a Skywatch Academy Athletic Department sweatshirt, civilian off-duty pants and rather expensive running shoes, which wasn’t surprising. Possible enemy activity in Core Space was more important than regulation uniforms, and since she was the commanding officer, she could wear pretty much whatever the hell she liked on the bridge of her own ship.

  “Report.”

  Winchester relinquished the center chair and manned the engineering station. “Five unidentified contacts in track, ma’am. We have a clean signal and telemetry on their approach.”

  “Let’s see it.”

  The XO switched the command net over and redirected the readouts to the Minstrel’s main screen.

  “Flying in formation,” Islington said, almost the moment the images appeared.

  I knew it. Winchester took a breath. “My thoughts exactly, ma’am.”

  “What’s the story on the Proximans, Cal?”

  The young signals officer straightened in his shock couch. “No signals beyond the distress call. Although if the unidents are Sarn, they could be bottling the transmission.”

  “I didn’t even think of that,” Winchester sighed. Ensign Grant was referring to the well known practice of intercepting enemy transmissions, jamming their source and re-broadcasting them on a different frequency for purposes of either luring vessels to advantageous locations or altering the content of the message itself. It wasn’t always successful, but when it worked, it was devastatingly effective. Experienced signals specialists were trained to scan for harmonics and what were known as “dark” transmissions, as those were primary evidence some kind of signal was being overtransmitted with either a canceling broadcast or false harmonics meant to distort the original message.

  The better of the two methods, at least with current equipment, was the cancel-ling broadcast, provided there was enough power available. The jamming ship simply blasted the exact analog or digital opposite of the original signal, resulting in its waveform being “canceled” in very much the same way an ocean wave could be canceled by propagating an opposite wave directly at it. Most ships broadcast on multiple frequencies to avoid “dark” anti-signals, but if they didn’t have the power, and were forced to stay on one channel, the jamming technique could make it very hard to punch through the interference.

  “Escape pods? Launches?”

  “Negative, ma’am.”

  Islington watched the five-ship wedge crawl along the tactical display. They were neither approaching nor turning away from the listening station. “So what you’re telling me, gentlemen, is that those five ships are Sarn. They aren’t attacking the station. They’re just– patrolling in Core space? And all the Proximans are still on the station?”

  “Affirmative,” Winchester spoke for the rest of the bridge. Pilot Finn McCampbell had his theories, but so far everyone else seemed to be agreeing with him, so he just kept his eyes and mind on his helm.

  “Pretty much what we would expect from a Proximan crew,” Islington mused. “Do we still have a line to the Rhode Island?”

  “Negative, ma’am. We can re-establish LOS with repeater four in 78 minutes,” Cal replied.

  “So we’re it. One against five,” the captain sighed.

  “Wouldn’t be the first time,” the XO replied.

  Islington punched the intraship. “Engineering, bridge. What’s our engines status?”

  “Engines at full capacity, ma’am. We’re go for all available flight modes.”

  The captain stared at the tactical display. Lieutenant Winchester had served with the captain long enough to realize she was considering something dangerous and entirely Minstrel-like in its conception. “So if I asked you to five percent me to the Proximan airlock–” she offered in a hypothetical tone of voice.

  “Not a problem, ma’am. We won’t even spill your drink.”

  “Stand by engineering.” Islington put the channel on listen-only. “XO, if I didn’t know better, I’d say that formation of unidents is waiting for something.”

  “Aye, ma’am,” Winchester replied cautiously, one eyebrow raised in anticipation of the other shoe dropping.

  Islington pointed absently at the tactical display. “So if we maneuver on a nine-zero and come around their trailing quarter at the far end of that run–”

  “We’ll be able to get to the station undetected, provided our cloak is tuned perfectly and we don’t make any course mistakes or experience any engine spikes.”

  “We’re not going to make any course mistakes, are we, Finn?”

  “Negative, ma’am,” the pilot said confidently. The captain couldn’t disagree. She had been on the bridge during many of Finn’s more remarkable maneuvers, including the one where he drove Minstrel across a moon’s surface at full power to confuse and destroy incoming missiles.

  “How much longer do you think we’ll have to wait to be relieved?” Islington asked, swiveling her chair to address the XO directly.

  “It will be several hours at minimum, assuming Argent is still on course. We can’t confirm.”

  “But long enough for whomever the Sarn are expecting to make their big arrival?”

  “Probably longer.”

  “You know how much I love it when I don’t have a choice, XO.”

  “Aye ma’am.”

  The captain made her decision and turned back to the helm. “Pilot, bring the Minstrel about. New course nine one negative mark twenty-one. Plot a parabolic intercept for Proximan airlock four. Cal, project our approach track on screen. Engage cloaking device and stand by to maneuver.”

  A quiet series of “ayes” followed each of the captain’s orders. The soothing hum of the frigate’s main engines rose from beneath
the deck plates as the sleek little ship pivoted in space and rolled into a sneaky new course towards the station. Moments later, it vanished from sight and any sensors that might have been watching. Subspace warfare doctrine held that if enemy vessels were monitoring a stationary contact, they would more than likely conclude losing tracking would indicate the ship had moved on or retreated. Since Skywatch was so far ahead of its adversaries in the study of subspace warfare, the alternative explanation of a cloaking device combined with a more aggressive combat stance wasn’t likely to be an enemy’s first suspicion. Then again, those same experts knew the window for using their stealth technology offensively was limited, so it stood to reason they would be better off using it than just thinking about it.

  “XO, I’m going to need a boarding party geared for open space assault with at least one corpsman. I want them armed heavily and standing by at airlock one in twenty minutes, affirmative?”

  “Aye, ma’am. I’ll pass out the ammunition myself.” Winchester moved towards the magneto-lift doors.

  “Very well.” Islington turned back to the helm. “Alright, Finn. Let’s do this by the numbers.”

  “Standing by.”

  On the Minstrel’s screen, a roughly rectangular series of course windows extended into the starry distance, projected on the display by the vessel’s navigational computer. They formed a virtual “tunnel” through which the starship was meant to maneuver in order to follow a least-time evasive course to the Proximan listening station’s far side airlock. The challenge, at least from a pilot’s perspective, was to avoid breaching the edges of the tunnel, as that would be more likely to trip the enemy vessels’ proximity and motion sensors. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, but since the enemy vessels were moving, Minstrel’s virtual tunnel would also be required to adjust in real-time. Some of those adjustments would likely require additional engine power, which might create a spike that would trip the enemy vessels’ emissions sensors.