A Deep Sleep (Valhalla Book 1) (11 page)

“Anyway to know for certain?” Athena asked, suspecting the answer even before she gave voice to the question.

“Not without giving away our position sir.” Bower said apologetically. “Their stealth is such that only high-intensity active scans in the right area of space would even reveal their presence. We could spend weeks looking and not find it, even if there is one here.”

“Very well. Thank you Mister Bower.”

“Anytime Captain.”

Athena closed the link and opened her comm to Heath only. “Thoughts?”

“This is an interior system that they don’t think has any connection to our space. The stealth drone is almost certainly located in Lalande. I say we risk it.” Heath offered.

“Sounds good to me.” Athena turned slightly and opened her comm to the CIC at large. “Navigation, plot me an FTL run, max safe speed. Maneuvering, prepare to receive thrust plan and FTL run parameters.”

“Plot FTL run, present location to Charlie Slip Gate, aye.” Navigation replied.

“Preparing systems to receive FTL run parameters, aye.” Helm echoed.

“Lieutenant Daniels, make sure the gunboats and
Fort Worth
follow suit.” Athena heard Lieutenant Daniels confirm her command.

The two ensigns quickly worked over their consoles. After no more than a minute they were ready. Lieutenant Daniels took a minute longer, the other ships locking in their own plans and checking with one another to ensure that every ship would remain roughly in formation and none of the ships would attempt to emerge in the same spot. That would be a disaster and also thoroughly announce their presence to the entire system.

“Maneuvering, execute.” She said once all the confirmations were in. 1
st
LRRS disrupted the boundary between normal space and subspace, then disappeared in a flash of light so brief and subtle that an outside observer would have needed to be very close to even see the event with the naked eye.

FI Virginis

1
st
LRRS: USS
Tripoli

Tripoli
hung in space, perfectly matched in her orbit around one of the central stars of the system binary. She traversed space in a near-elliptical orbit, looking for all the universe like a dark rock among many. Across the system, so distant that light would take nearly 3 days to reach their location, subspace was disturbed and 7 fast moving objects emerged in formation. Even with FTL sensors, there was a small but measurable delay.

“Slip gate event.” Ensign Johnson called out. “6 ships, standard Russian convoy formation.”

“Confirm that, six ships?” Athena responded.

“Yes sir, we’ve got three signatures that match our records on the civvies;
Cormoran
,
Lancing
, and
Sevmorput
.  We’ve also got four naval signatures. We’re getting signatures on
Kashin
,
Ognevoy
, and
Azov
. We are getting good readings on their subspace drive emissions.”

“You’re getting drive emissions?” Heath said incredulously. He turned to face Athena, a questioning look on his face.

“I agree, that is odd.” Athena said thoughtfully. “Especially since
Kirov
is supposed to be in that group.”

“Trap, sir?” Heath asked.

“Trap.” Athena pulled up the local map of the beta slip gate, the one through which the convoy had emerged. She drew a line from the gate towards the alpha slip gate. “They know they chased off a frigate, but they might be expecting another one or two waiting for them. Tactical, get together with sensors, find me
Kirov
.”

An hour later, Athena received a call from CIC. Athena had returned to her day cabin, taking her first nap in a day and a half. When her comm buzzed it took her less than 5 seconds to snap upright, acknowledge the call, and make it to her hatch. Three more steps took her across the deck and to her chair. The call of ‘Captain on deck” hadn’t even finished yet.

“Status?” She asked.

“We’ve got a slight subspace distortion, half an AU aft of the convoy. Based on current velocities, this distance will widen a bit since the convoy is moving faster. They accelerated at light thrust for the first hour through the gate, so they got some spacing.” Johnson turned towards Athena. “If I had to guess sir,
Kirov
came through the gate right behind them and stayed cold. They’ll just keep plodding along and hope that someone drives in to make an attack on the group.”

“Seems like a fair bet.” Athena said.

“The day FTL drives are cheap enough for the civvies, we’re screwed.” Ensign Conway commented aloud. He realized that he had been louder than intended and looked around CIC with an appropriately embarrassed look on his face.

“Well, Ensign, FTL drives are expensive. I suspect that once they are cheaper, we’ll have some solution to that.”

“Yessir.” He said and turned back to his console.

“Let’s turn the tables on them. Daniels, get me the other captains, we have a plan to hatch.”

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Tripoli
waited and watched as the convoy inched across the system at nearly 0.25C, waiting for the convoy to reach the closest point to their hiding spot in the Oort Cloud. The CIC crews rotated through each watch keeping an eye on the suspected location of
Kirov
. Now, however, Athena sat in her command chair, in the full pressure suit.
Tripoli
was at battle stations with full decompression protocols. Athena connected herself with engineering.

“Now, Cheng.” Was all she said. She received no response and expected none, the chief was about to be too busy for such things. Athena had ordered a 20 second start-up on all four fusion reactors. The book said it took 5 minutes, the chief had said 45 seconds. Athena had the last word with 20 seconds, of course the obligatory complaints from the Cheng and the warning of instantaneous death from a containment failure had been repeatedly stated. Athena needed that power and she needed it immediately.

“Full power coming online now, sir.” Maneuvering called out.

“Fifteen gunboats report full power,
Fort Worth
as well, sir.” Daniels reported.

“Thrust plan Delta Two.” Athena said.

“Executing Delta Two.” Ensign Masters responded. “FTL drive is coming online, distortion forming. Thrusting at 110%, building velocity.”

“They’ve spotted us sir, full power sweeps and localizing.” Johnson said, her voice under better control every day.

“Very well.” Athena replied.

“Distortion stable, engaging in three, two, one, engage.” Masters pushed the control for FTL forward 5 clicks. “Entering distortion, going to FTL.”

“Normal space sensors offline, subspace sensors have come through the distortion.” Johnson informed Athena of the expected effects of transition to subspace.

“We are superluminal at 5x light, sir.” Masters report was the final in a series that followed a transition to subspace. The trip was short, with the
Tripoli
and her escorts covering the distance in 8 minutes.

“Emergence!” Master called out over the alarms that rang out as
Tripoli
emerged from subspace.

“
Azov
is firing, sir.” The bridge shook to give emphasis to Johnson’s statement. “Targeting from both cruisers, they haven’t fired yet.”

“Heath?” Athena prompted.

“Point defense is established and in full auto.”

Athena flipped on her comm, already hooked into the FTL comm array.

“Hornet squadron 4, let’s wake up
Kirov
.” Athena shut the comm link. From within the Oort Cloud, the last 5 gunboats fired up their reactors and engaged FTL. Instead of the more sedate 5x light of the
Tripoli
, squadron 4 went to max speed, 50x light. The gunboats leapt across the distance in a little more than 45 seconds. They emerged just aft of the suspected position of
Kirov
. The big ship, realizing she’d been made, came to life like a sleeping dragon.

As the gunboats arrived aft of her,
Kirov
lashed out. A gunboat died almost instantly upon exit from FTL and Athena worried that the
Kirov
had more of her systems ready than NavInt suspected possible. The remaining four gunboats, however, continued inward, driving hard towards the maneuvering ship. Clearly her first shot had been one heck of a lucky shot. The squadron closed the short distance rapidly and each survivor fired three Mk-92Bs at the battlecruiser.
Kirov
corkscrewed wildly and her point defense reached out for the inbounds. From the range they were fired,
Kirov
had no real chance. Twelve Mk-92Bs achieved the correct range and detonated.

The gunboats scattered, one last one being blotted out by a final missile salvo from the dying
Kirov
. From within the thermonuclear fires only the bow section emerged, spinning and leaking fluids into space. Athena saw no lifeboats.

“Scratch one battlecruiser.” Johnson cried out.

“And still three ships to go.” Athena needed them all to stay focused. “Lieutenant Heath, target
Azov
, all railguns. Daniels, comm the gunboats, formation echo. Tell
Forth Worth
she is go for the plan, smoke ‘em.”

“Aye, sir.”

The other three Hornet squadrons dropped into formation behind
Tripoli
. The three remaining escorts concentrated their fire on
Tripoli
, putting her new systems to the test. From around the circumference of the assault carrier, twelve large drones emerged, surging away from the ship and emitting confusing ECM and signatures that emulated the gunboats. They established a large formation around
Tripoli
. The two enemy cruisers switched their fire, dueling with the ghost gunboats. While the gunboats couldn’t fire back, they did contain small fusion reactors. Their reactors powered a small point defense laser that allowed them to attempt to engage a missile or two. When the enemy missiles closed, the drones carried several single-shot versions of the shipboard shotguns. To further complicate the enemy’s targeting,
Tripoli
continued to generate ECM jamming and ghost gunboat contacts. The Russian sensor operators and tactical officers were seeing nearly 30 gunboats that simply didn’t exist.
Kashin
fired a full salvo at a ghost squadron and saw over half the salvo be destroyed before reaching detonation range. They were rewarded with the destruction of two “gunboat” drones. The ghost gunboats from
Tripoli
remained, prompting them to firing an additional wave.
Ognevoy
seemed to realize that there were ghost images, but still knew there were real gunboats there as well. Her captain resorted to firing a railgun salvo at each collection of gunboats before engaging with missiles. All of this was taking time they didn’t have.

Athena allowed the group to close to within 500,000km before she commed the gunboats tight on
Tripoli
’s stern.

“Hornets, take them out.” She received a chorus of ‘yes sirs” and a few other less regulation comments. The fifteen gunboats emerged from their cover behind
Tripoli
and a squadron headed for each of the remaining escorts. Seeing the sudden emergence of even more gunboats from what seemed to be nowhere prompted the Russian crews to initially ignore them. As they pushed ahead, their drive signatures and targeting radars forced them to reconsider.
Azov
lashed out with a powerful microwave emitter. While the emitter was next to useless against a hardened ship like
Tripoli
, against the Hornets, it was the perfect weapon. Squadron 1, targeting
Azov
, lost two of their number to the emitter. Hornet 4 lost fusion containment for a brief millisecond and disappeared in a flash of light. Hornet 2 managed to avoid containment failure from the emitter, but the effects of
Azov
’s 6-barrel 155mm railgun topside turret ripped her into a dozen pieces. The other three gunboats continued to close.

Aboard
Tripoli
, Athena held onto her command chair more tightly as CIC was rocked by a large explosion and after shudder.

“Hull breach forward, decks C and D, frames 8 through 25 on the port side are open to space.” Called Master Chief Brown, Chief of the Boat (COB), over the comm from Damage Control I. DC parties are enroute. I’ll have more info for you then Captain.”

“Keep me informed COB.” Athena responded.

“Yes sir.” He said and closed the line.

“Sir, Squadron Three has launched, target is
Kashin
.” Johnson reported.

Athena looked more intently at the display, watching the twelve missiles separate from the four gunboats and drive towards the Russian destroyer. The powerful anti-missile ECM jammers came online to confuse the missiles, drones and decoys popped out of her hull and she tried to make wild evasive maneuvers. Her point defense proved surprisingly effective, taking down five of the inbounds. The decoys seduced another three off target and ECM burned out the seekers in two. The remaining two pressed on. One missile was winged by a shotgun burst and spun wildy out of control, detonating almost immediately as the missile determined that it had reached its closest point. The final missile continued on, through the inner point defense shield.
Kashin
surged her repulsors as the warhead detonated close aboard at just over 1 km. The ship staggered sideways and power died along her stern. Two of her four main thrusters ceased operation, slowing the ship’s acceleration. She began to lag in the group.

“Missiles launched against
Ognevoy
too sir, sixteen this time.” Johnson interjected.

Athena watched a similar story play out, with
Ognevoy
’s point defense at least as effective. Four missiles made it through the field of fire and detonated around the destroyer, bathing the ship in massive amounts of radiation. She was disadvantaged by the larger missile salvo, but she’d gotten in her licks too. Only three gunboats had survived, with one of those taking damage to her missile launchers, preventing the firing of two of her missiles. Otherwise, the squadron had launched a full salvo at the destroyer. The destroyer’s hull couldn’t take the pounding and she dropped thrust, quickly falling behind.

“
Ognevoy
’s power levels are dropping and I’m reading indications of hull venting across her entire starboard side. There is also a substantial heat build-up in her starboard aft corner, indication of an internal fire. She’s out of the fight for a while sir.” Johnson stated.

“Status on
Azov
.” Athena was still focused on the cruiser,
Tripoli
still bearing down on the relatively unwounded ship. The gunboats of the first squadron had expended their missile loads, making them useless against the tough ship. The puny 50mm railguns on the Hornets wouldn’t even make the Russian repulsors surge to stop those.