Tactics of Conquest (Stellar Conquest) (28 page)

“You are mistaken, Captain. We turned over the details of control to AIs long ago, and retained command. Just as computers really control your engines and your weapons, and you control the computers, you must allow the Conquest AI to control her body, this boat, and you
command
her.”

“I don’t ‘
must’
anything, Lieutenant. You have to convince me with more than the advice of one young officer.”

“Don’t take the word of a lieutenant, Captain. Take the word of a Ryss. You trusted Captain Chirom, and I was the son he never had. If you knew him, you know me. That means, if you know Desolator, you know Michelle Conquest.” Trissk paused and waited.

“So…you believe Michelle is trustworthy enough to be given full control of
Conquest
? To let the boat become her body? Even as young as she is?”

“I am not suggesting you let her make command decisions. Just allow her freedom to exercise her full capabilities. This vessel is not reaching her potential. When
Desolator
rebuilt
Conquest
, he remade her in his image. That means she needs a new mind for her new body. Right now she is like a zombie, barely able to shamble into a fight.” Trissk’s voice rose, impassioned.

“I wouldn’t go that far. She’s very potent.”

“She’s like a strong but clumsy warrior in a claw-fight. Skill and speed matters more than strength.”

“Dammit. The more you people argue for this, the more I distrust it.”

“Captain, I remember well one of your favorite sayings. ‘Use all your tools.’ This is good advice. Please…
Skipper
…heed your own words.”

Blatant manipulation,
Absen thought
, but he’s right, nonetheless. We’re damaged, and we need to get back into the fight. We can’t let the Meme recover, and I don’t want to make this decision at the last second, and too late. Much as I hate the idea, I’m going to have to take a leap of faith.

“All right, Trissk. I do hear Chirom’s voice in you. My thanks. Return to your duties.” He closed the channel and turned to Michelle’s avatar, still her representation on the bridge. “Warrant Officer Conquest, I hereby grant you full access to all systems on this boat.”

“Including the distributed processing nodes?” she asked.

Absen gritted his teeth for a moment. Letting her consciousness flow to all parts of the vessel would effectively end his ability to shut her down at the central CPU. If he agreed, he was commending the lives of every organic being on
Conquest
into her hands.

“Yes. Go ahead,” he said. “I need this boat back in fighting shape.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Nothing seemed to change on the bridge for a few moments, as Absen observed his officers concentrating on their duties, passing orders, coordinating and synchronizing the crew as they worked frantically to repair burned-out power conduits, broken machines and frozen servos. On the displays he could see two dozen grabships flitting around the outside of the boat like demented bumblebees, cutting away twisted pieces of armor, pushing new clamshell mechanisms into place to mask and unmask the weapons systems and sensors. Alongside them he could see at least a hundred more drones of all sorts crawling like spiders on the hull, assisting them in a coordinated dance.

“Holy shit,” COB Timmons muttered under his breath, and then handed Absen a mug of coffee. “Repair efficiency just doubled again, and the curve is still climbing. That Michelle is really something.”

Absen sipped, then cleared his throat. “I think we can just call her Conquest from now on, COB. Like Desolator is
Desolator
. You’re watching her become what she envisioned herself at our first meeting.”

“Not sure what you mean, sir. I wasn’t there,” Timmons replied.

“An angel, COB. A guardian angel, golden and terrible as the blazing sun.”

Timmons shook his head. “Not what we need.”

“Hmm?”

“We don’t need a guardian, boss. We need an avenging angel.”

Full conventional drive speed, anyway.

Once, that sight would have filled Absen with concern, if not fear. He remembered the terrible beating Task Force
Conquest
had taken at the hands of the Gliese 370 Guardian, and the desperate measures he had to employ to win. Even then, only the revolt of the Sekoi against their masters had saved them.

Where before he had spears and slings and arrows, trying to bring down this mammoth, now he had an enormous hammer. Like Mjölnir, the mythical magic weapon of the Norse god Thor, Absen finally had the means to smite his enemies with awesome and decisive blows.

Even better, he could fly, while the enemy could only walk.

Only six Exploders left,
he thought
. Maybe I should wait the thirty-six hours we need to replace the main weapons array, but even that isn’t enough to take down one of these monsters. A Destroyer, yes, but the numbers say we can’t even penetrate a Guardian’s two-kilometer-thick armor on the first shot. The Meme’s love of big ships is justified. Double the diameter and you can triple or quadruple the thickness of armor, if you don’t need to increase internal systems and crew very much.

“We’re going to use an Exploder on him,” Absen reiterated. “The remaining Guardian and the moon laser are our two major threats, and with the laser, all we have to do is stay away from it. That means ‘that big bastard’ is our number one problem, worth an extreme solution. Are we at full charge?”

“Only two actions, sir,” Klis replied.

“Can’t wait for three?”

“He will be upon us before we have a third full charge,” she responded.

“It will have to be good enough. Pulse in, fire the missile, and pulse onward. Make ready.”

“Missiles,” Ford said. “Now that they are at full battle alert, they will probably react within the time that our fastest shot will need. They could easily pick the Exploder missile out of space. We have to launch a full spread, and add in whatever direct fire weapons we can, just as distractions.”

“Understood. Conquest, if you control the actual weapons fire, how much time will we save?”

“Approximately point seven seconds, sir.”

“So we’ll get the strike down to one point three seconds?”

“No, sir,” Conquest replied with a hint of prim. “Three point three seconds, including the two seconds it takes to acquire the target after the pulse.”

Exasperated, Absen said, “Conquest, I just gave you
carte blanche
majeure
. Now I need you to stop acting like a goddamn computer and show some initiative. Tell me what I need to know, not just what I ask.”

“Yes, sir.”

There came a slight pause, and Absen imagined Conquest’s powerful processors running through innumerable permutations of meaning in the English words, and the surrounding complex situation. He had left his goal deliberately ambiguous, seeking to teach his new boat-brain rather than merely lecture.

“If I control all necessary systems,” she finally replied, “I can reduce the exposure time to approximately two point nine six seconds.”

Absen stabbed his index finger at the avatar. “
That’s
the right answer.
That’s
what I need you to start doing. A good officer gets ahead of her commander and anticipates what he wants. Right now, I need the very best solution to kill the enemy while minimizing risk to this boat, using the tactics I have explained.”

“Aye aye, sir. I’ll do my best.”

“That’s what I require.” Absen sat back, folded his arms and watched his crew go about their business.

“Ready for pulse run,” Okuda said, his fingers lightly touching his console.

“Firing sequences ready,” Ford reported. “Exploder in the forward launch tube. All standard missiles ready.”

“Repairs suspended and all parties report secure,” Timmons said.

Klis said, “Engineering ready.”

Once the rest of the sections reported in, Absen stared at the screen and the oncoming Guardian for a moment, so like peering through a periscope at an unsuspecting surface target.

A very big, scary surface target.

Chopping his hand through the air, he said, “Execute.”

Thrum
went the TacDrive, and then the captain’s time sense slowed to a crawl. As he was still linked, despite breaking open his cocoon, someone – Conquest, probably – had provided him with the perfect way to watch the action at a rate he could follow.

His muscles felt as if they were made of taffy and his head a block of wood. Speeding up time sense made the rest of the physical world seem dead slow, which was why the ability was normally only used in full VR. In hybrid mode, he could think and transmit fast, but even moving his eyes seemed to take forever.

For a handful of seconds all remained still. Then the screens flickered and the Guardian took shape on the main display, hundreds of fusors flickering like watchfires as hot plasma leaked from open ports. Immediately the enemy ship began spewing hypers by the thousands.

“Target locked,” he heard Ford’s words, oddly distorted. “Firing.” The weapons officer was reporting, not controlling, as Absen could already see Conquest’s missiles launching in a wave of two hundred.

Two hundred and one, as the Exploder added itself to the mix.

Deliberately using the same body as the standard rockets, it was now just one among many, gambling on getting close enough. Absen watched as lasers fired, ignoring the oncoming hypers and targeting the Guardian, the better to cover the speeding EarthFleet missiles. Red eyes winked as the bolts of light impacted, flaring and then disappearing like sparks above a bonfire.

The view swung ponderously to the side in slowtime, and then the screens froze yet again as the TacDrive engaged. When its field dropped once more, Absen’s time sense synchronized and the world righted itself. “Report.”

Aft sensors threw pictures onto the screens and his eyes drank the information. Explosions bloomed like New Year’s fireworks, filling the displays with artificial colors as the system tried to make sense of the overload.

“No det –” Ford began, and then came the gratifying whiteout of the Exploder scraping space clean of all matter more complex than a free particle. When the holotank updated, Absen could see a broken hulk, drifting through the void like a deflated beach ball.

“What are those?” he asked, pointing at an amorphous cloud.

“Hypers,” Scoggins said. “They lost targeting when we pulsed, and there’s no one to update them.”

“Spoke too soon,” Ford said darkly as the flock, like birds, suddenly wheeled around and accelerated toward Conquest.

“This is why I wanted to always keep one pulse in the can,” Absen snarled to himself, though the prime watch heard him easily enough. “How many?”

“About sixty thousand,” Conquest replied.

“Can we stop them?”

“Not with what we have.”

“Will we have a pulse before they hit?”

“No. They will impact in nine minutes.” The avatar waited, inhumanly still, for her commander’s decision.

“Dammit. We keep ending up behind the power curve.”

“Skipper,” a new voice broke in. “Sorry, but I’ve been monitoring the command channel. Sir, my squadron is waiting in the chutes for a mission. Do you need us now?”

“Vango,” Absen barked. “Do the Crows have fusion missiles strapped on?”

“Yes, sir. Two per bird.”

“Then launch, and aim those warheads at the densest parts of that hyper cloud. We have to cut down on their numbers enough for the lasers to handle.”

“Aye aye, sir. Aerospace will get it done.”

Vango, alone in
Lark,
led the way as the first flight of four StormCrows blasted out of the launch chutes. Every six seconds another four followed, until all forty joined in a loose formation that wheeled around into a rough disk, flat side toward the approaching hyper cloud. The refurbished fighters, with better linked cybernetics, had dispensed with the gunner position in favor of more power and ammo.

“Mission control, request optimal targeting coordinates,” he called over his secure link.

Conquest’s melodious synthesized voice – he was becoming familiar with it by now from working in the simulators – replied, “Uploading now.”

“Alpha Squadron, on my mark, fox one.” When he had confirmation that each of forty missiles possessed an aim point corresponding to a dense part of the hyper cloud, he said, “Mark.”

Forty standard missiles kicked loose, igniting their fusion rockets as soon as they had cleared the fighters to avoid blast damage. “Uploading second wave coordinates,” he heard.

Okay…if we fire our second weapons, we won’t have any more heavy hitters; but then again, there aren’t any ships to shoot anyway. Besides, we can’t dogfight with hundred-ton missiles strapped onto our fuselages. Better to go in clean.

Vango followed along in VR space as the first wave flew to its designated set of positions and detonated. While the hypers had obviously fixed their attention on the nearest enemy, without the positive control of the Guardian and its crew they simply arrowed directly toward Conquest. Thus, they took no evasive maneuvers and the forty blasts ripped into the dense clump like bursts of insecticide among swarming termites. Thousands died. Some vaporized outright, but most had their living integument burned, stripped or irradiated to death, leaving the internal ferrocrystal penetrators shooting pointlessly through space with no guidance.

The second wave did even more damage, simultaneous detonations timed to wait until the cluster had pulled even tighter as it approached
Conquest
. After that…

“All flights, merge and strafe, then come about and shoot them down. Hold your spacing. I don’t want any fratricide. Maximize timesenses and keep your safety protocols on. Anyone who overrides just to get a kill, I will have your ass.”