Homeworld (Odyssey One) (4 page)

“Arm all forward tubes!” Sun called. “Get me a targeting solution for the squadron ahead of us.”

“Calculating.”

Sun nodded, though he knew that his officers were too busy looking to their own instruments to notice, and returned
to the tactical displays focused on the closer pursuit group. “Status on our pursuers?”

“We lost contact when we exited the corona, Captain,” Shi said. “Interference is keeping us from monitoring the telemetry of our missiles. We did register detonations, however, so they successfully entered terminal guidance.”

“Understood. Thank you,” Sun said, shifting his display forward to the second squadron that was now accelerating away from the star on a parallel course to their own.

The
Weifang
had a current time-speed advantage, but they’d lose a lot of that with the enemy now accelerating to keep them in range as long as possible. In open space, there were far fewer tricks they could use to lose or outrun the enemy; either they had the engines to muscle through or they didn’t.

Unfortunately, from what he knew of the alien capabilities from captured NAC telemetry data, the
Weifang
simply didn’t.

“Ships emerging from the corona, Captain!”

Sun flipped his displays to the rear, eyes on the data as it poured in.

“Four in pursuit, wait…five. Fifth ship appears badly damaged and burning in space, Captain. No sign of a sixth.”

One kill, one crippled. Not as bad as I expected,
Sun considered as he flipped forward again and analyzed the squadron ahead.
They seem as vulnerable to conventional weapons as they are to the Confederacy’s latest toys.

That was a touchy subject in the Eastern Block military, actually. Despite an early tech advantage in the last war, the NAC had outstripped them massively when the economy flip-flopped. Initially, China’s massive economy and industrial base gave the Block what seemed an insurmountable advantage over the failing infrastructure of the United States.

For decades, the U.S. and most western nations had let their infrastructure crumble and rot away while China and other Asian nations had invested in the best technology of the day. The U.S. in particular was literally beggared by a point-by-point comparison. As early as 2010, places like Korea and Hong Kong had had Internet and information network access that made the United States look like a third-world country. Initially during the war, the Eastern Block seemed to have an insurmountable lead in industrial and scientific capacity.

The Eastern Block was more socialist in nature, with governments seeing the need for advancement even in the absence of immediate profit. That investment across the board gave the Block a massive advantage over the U.S. in the early days of the Third World War, but what no one in the Block had foreseen was the Second Industrial Revolution.

What started as hobbyist toys turned into a technical revolution that destroyed the Eastern Block as a relevant industrial superpower.

Microfactories, home replication systems, the ability to airdrop a box anywhere on the planet and have it start producing weapons, medicines, vehicles…within five years the Block economy was effectively crippled, and the war began to balance out. The United States had only held on as long as they did because supply logistics to invade the U.S. mainland were a nightmare. The Confederacy Pact bought them a couple years as the full resources of Canada and the worker population of Mexico were swung into the war effort, but it was simple home fabrication units that most people credited with winning the war.

Most people with an education, Sun amended to himself. Publically, the stars of the Confederate War effort were their Archangels of course. Built with captured CM technology
stolen from Block aircraft, the Archangels had been effective, but were only a drop in the bucket against the war effort.

“Captain,” Shi called, breaking him from his reverie. “The forward squadron is slowing.”

Slowing?
Sun scowled, examining the information.
That doesn’t make sense. They’ll lose several minutes of engagement time with their current changes.

Sun didn’t like it when the enemy seemingly handed him gifts from the gods. It usually meant that there was a curse hidden within waiting to be sprung.

What are they up to?

Sun’s eyes narrowed and he flipped his displays back, checking the state of the pursuing squadron. He bared his teeth when he noted that they were still accelerating, and quickly plotted their future course against the
Weifang
and the forward squadron.

They’re going to catch us in crossfire. It’ll be a shorter engagement, true, but there’s no way the Weifang’s defenses will hold up to that kind of firestorm.

“Navigation, begin plotting alternative vectors,” he ordered. “They want us in a trap. I would prefer to not indulge them.”

“Yes, Captain!”

They’re better tacticians than the Confederate reports indicated,
Sun thought, annoyed. The captured NAC reports indicated what they actually called “giants swinging clubs about”—dangerous certainly, but also stupid. What he was seeing here, however, didn’t agree with that assessment in the slightest.

“Captain, we have no clean escape vectors.”

“I guessed as much already. I want a minimum contact vector.”

“Plotted. Sent to your station, sir.”

Sun nodded tersely, taking a moment to continue his previous thought while it was fresh in his mind. One thing space war had over the terrestrial kind was that decisions were made in leisure. There were limits to functioning within a stellar gravity well, and light-speed was one of those.
Are the Confederacy reports faulty, or are they just now beginning to learn from previous mistakes?

Either was possible, as was the more remote possibility of intentionally bad intelligence being leaked to the Block’s spies. Certainly the reports indicated that the
Odyssey
left few survivors to report back on tactical failures, so perhaps the aliens were simply slow due to poor or no intelligence of their own.

Whatever it is, they could have picked a better time to learn new tricks.

“Alternatives to your station, Captain.”

“I have them,” Sun affirmed, eyes falling on the alternative plots navigation had sent him.

It was all academic, really, just mathematical equations run through the
Weifang
’s network of supercomputers. Three options presented, only one of which offered better than a fifteen percent improvement over their current course. He picked that one.

“Course plot accepted, Captain. Engaging on your command.”

“Set sail, Helm,” Sun said. “Keep the star at our back, tell all stations to clear the guns, and stand by for combat.”

“Yes, Captain. Issuing alert now.”

War in space, Sun was learning, did not progress like terrestrial battles. On Earth, even with satellites and advanced instruments, you didn’t see your enemy until they were already within striking distance. Over the horizon capabilities of many
weapon systems meant that by the time an attack was visible, it had often already landed and it was all over save for the dying.

In space you could see your enemy literally so far off that engaging them would take days, weeks, or even longer. Even at relativistic speeds, as was currently the limit within solar gravity wells, launching weapons at extreme ranges could take hours or more before the payload arrived. Even lasers took minutes or longer, and with those time frames, accuracy was a bad joke at best.

You had to get close, within a few light-seconds ideally, to be considered truly lethal.

Oh, one could get lucky. A stray hit by those alien lasers, even at extreme ranges, might be enough to eliminate the
Weifang
to be sure. Still, no laser was perfectly collimated, and over distances measured in light-seconds, even the best would begin to lose power.

Judging from the initial engagements and from captured intelligence files, Sun was confident that the enemy relied primarily on lasers as their go-to weapon in a clinch. This was both good and bad for the
Weifang
, as a laser travelled at light-speed and was effectively impossible to detect until it was too late. But it was also unguided, and thus incapable of adjusting course after being fired.

The
Weifang
’s missiles were slower, to be sure, but they were self-guided and didn’t lose their punch over distance.

I suppose we’ll see if the Block’s old-styled weaponry is as effective against these aliens as the Confederacy’s high-tech toys.

“Pursuing ships are closing the distance, Captain. They’re entering extreme range again.”

Sun grimaced, eyes on the plot.
Damn, they’re fast.

The Block still had an edge over the Confederacy in countermass technology, roughly a generation or so ahead
of the best the North Americans could manage. It was a struggle to stay ahead of them, but one that had been worth the effort in the local space race. It was also that lead which let the Block develop a FTL drive system separate from the ultra-classified transition technology of the Confederation.

The normally slack security of the NAC had tightened to unreal levels surrounding their transition technology. Anything even having to do with the theory behind the T-Drive was secured off world at a Confederation base on Mars.

In order for the Block to stay competitive, researchers had been forced to push CM technical development well past the bleeding edge and into unknown territory. That meant that the
Weifang
was considerably faster than the
Odyssey
, yet it was clear that the alien squadron was still able to get inside their orbit and would have at least a passing shot at engaging them.

“Shift armor to best deflection. All damage control teams to full alert,” Sun ordered. “All weapons to full automatic fire. Engage as the targets bear.”

There wasn’t really a lot more he could do or say. From this point forward it was all down to the math.

“Yes, Captain!”

The
Weifang
barreled along its escape vector, warping space time all to hell and back as it went, six ships ahead of them angled in to engage from the side while to the aft five more would be opening fire anytime. Evasive course changes began as the closest ships approached within a light-minute, vectored thrust putting the ship into a pattern-eight cone with random interval changes.

Sun hoped it would be enough, but there was a definite limit on what kind of evasive action they could take if they wanted to keep putting distance between them and the enemy. If they spread their course changes out too much, they’d lose
ground. Too little, however, and the enemy lasers would have an easy shot and they’d be fried.

Of course, with luck on the wrong side of these equations, we’ll fry anyway. Welcome to the war.

“We just picked up stray photons from a laser, sir. Missed by at least a light-second.”

“Understood. Do we know which ship?” Sun asked.

“Yes, Captain. The corona burn was clear.”

“Direct the computers to engage the offender.”

“Yes, Captain!”

The target lit up on his plot, and Sun noted that it was one of the ships off their port side bow that had engaged them. The
Weifang’s
computers would have to wait until their evasive maneuvers brought them back to port before they could launch against the target.

“More photons, second laser source, Captain.”

“Lock in the source, target and engage as the guns clear.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Aft tubes one through five firing.”

Sun nodded, checking the plot. The missiles were live in space, heading down well under full CM. As the distance between them and the
Weifang
increased, the telemetry feeds became more dated, but he kept one eye on them as they flew anyway.

Sun wanted hard data on the enemy point defense systems, and he wanted it yesterday.

“Forward tubes one through eight, firing.”

New lights snapped into being on the plot, this time racing away to the port side forward. Those telemetry tracks quickly degraded as relativity and light-speed limitations took over as well, but he had the aft feeds to distract him from the annoyance.

The telemetry from aft reported the missiles entering terminal guidance, which meant that they’d already struck the enemy ship almost a minute earlier but he had to wait for that data. For the moment Sun contented himself with the limited feed coming from the instrument packages tucked into the missile’s noses.

The enemy squadron opened fire with point defense lasers, or he assumed that they were PD lasers at least. It was possible they were using the main guns to swat the inbound weapons, but that seemed to be overkill of the highest order. Telemetry lights blinked out on the missiles one by one as they hit terminal guidance, warheads exploding from the main thrusters.

Three missiles down before terminal mode. Can they catch the warheads in terminal?

The answer, he was pleased to note, was clearly no. In terminal mode the warheads accelerated massively, propelled by an explosion that separated them from their thrust modules. They were already close to the target and the last second change of course and speed made them the devil itself to track and kill.

From the last two missiles, eight of the MIRV warheads slammed into the target. He had to wait a few more seconds from the end of the telemetry feed to get decent visual images from the
Weifang
’s scopes, but when they finally were processed he was rewarded with large gouts of fire erupting from the enemy ship and an almost instant loss of acceleration from same.

He flipped to the forward plot, the telemetry from those missiles having already gone terminal. Three of the missiles had survived that far, terminal guidance launching fifteen sub-munitions through space. Some of those lights blinked
out as PD systems on the enemy ship leapt into action, but more than enough survived the final freefall to impact.

“Target is burning, Captain. Acceleration dropping.”