CHAPTER 24

Captain Konstantinov stopped his pacing of the Gagarin’s bridge to glance at the ship’s chronometer. His brows drew together and his eyes narrowed to slits.

“Are we ready?”

“All boats are in firing position for the ambush Captain!” the First Officer informed him.

“Synchronize all ship’s chronometers one more time, and charge up the capacitors,” Konstantinov ordered. “All ships prepare to fire!” He glared at the main viewer, checking it against the tactical hologram. One hundred submarines formed a wide ring three rows deep about an empty point in space. The ring was thousands of kilometers in diameter, but each ship stood ready, facing into the center. On the edge of the viewer was an enormous swath of distortion. Distances were jaded on the two dimensional display, but it was soon apparent that the distortion was progressing at an extraordinarily rapid rate perpendicular to, and directly towards the center of the ring.

“They still don’t see us through their distortion pattern,” Konstantinov noted, adding, “Let’s hope this works as well as it did in the trials. We only have one shot from this firing position.” The Captain’s concern was apparent, and warranted. Their mission was to harass the invading Alliance fleet, but as that fleet was travelling at superluminal velocities the task was easier said than done. Ironically, Konstantinov’s picture of this task was remarkably similar to the U-boat war in the North Atlantic circa World War Two. The Alliance fleet was for all intents and purposes a convoy, and his submarines were a classic wolf pack. The fast submarines would harry the periphery of the Alliance, forcing it to maintain its formation, whittling it down, and slowing its advance. The standard Terran squadrons shadowed the Alliance fleet, waiting for stragglers like hungry sharks. It was a sensible plan, but for the laws of trans-superluminal physics which prevented a ship from firing at superluminal velocities. Try as they might the Terrans could not get around this restriction. The blaster with its energetic plasma stream punched a hole in the superluminal field about a ship. The result was a complete and violent disruption of the field which sent the ship careening out of superluminal and out of control. By firing its blaster projectors at high speed a ship could actually tear itself apart in the departure from superluminal. This restriction was one of the reasons Galactic warfare evolved into the formal static doctrine that it had. A ship could always escape by going into superluminal, and a fleet could avoid engagement by never coming out of superluminal. The Terrans, therefore, had to find another way to harass the Alliance fleets if they were to slow or prevent them from speeding unmolested to Terra. Therefore, Alexander revisited the concept of the ambush.

Konstantinov and his submarines were about to put the idea into effect. His submarines waited at a pre-coordinated point along the Alliance course. The ships were small in size and mass, and motionless, making their signatures almost invisible to the Alliance scanners when they were hampered by their own superluminal distortions. The timing was critical, and had to be controlled by computer. The actual amount of time the Alliance ships were to be within the target area was almost infinitesimal, so everything had to be perfect.

“One minute!”

“Captain! The New Jersey and her squadrons are coming out of superluminal in attack position on our flank!” The First Officer called.

“Synchronize her chronometers to our firing sequence! All ships lock blasters in on computer controlled firing sequence!” Konstantinov ordered. The one hundred and fifty-six ships of the Seventh Fleet, less the twenty-five ships of the Iowa squadron, acknowledged the Gagarin’s chronometer and waited. The superluminal distortion of the Alliance fleet suddenly rushed through the center of the ring.

“Fire!”

Simultaneously every ship fired blindly into the preset killing field. Plasma streams from the Terran ships bolted through the empty space, searching like fingers for invisible coins. In immediate response ship after ship dropped out of superluminal and into normal space. The Terran ships did not wait, pouncing mercilessly on the stricken vessels. The onslaught was ferocious and sudden. The Terrans expecting a sharp fray, but these were not Chem ships and crews, determined to die in battle. They were Golkos and Seer’koh caught completely by surprise, finding themselves suddenly thrust into normal space and surrounded by the dreaded Terran battleships. Even as the first broadside from the New Jersey bloomed, gutting a mighty Golkos battleship, the first calls of surrender were crowding the ethernet. In a matter of moments all thirty-seven Alliance ships which dropped out of superluminal either surrendered or were destroyed.

Captain Konstantinov was livid with the Alliance ships.

“Fight damn you fight! What treachery is this?”

“They are all surrendering, Captain, we’ve orders from the New Jersey to hold our fire.”

“Fantastic, now what? What are we going to do with them? We don’t have enough ships to take prisoners! We’re supposed to be on our way to the next ambush!” Konstantinov was consumed with frustration, and he voiced the new dilemma facing the Terrans. What indeed to do with their prisoners?

#

Five decurns of hell followed for the mighty Golkos-Seer’koh fleet. Their sensors all but useless. Their enormous superluminal interference pattern blurred out everything. All the Alliance ships could do was to press on. A half a dozen times the first ambush was repeated, and each time Alliance warships fell out of superluminal into normal space, there to become prey for the Terran wolves. There was simply no viable defense against the attacks. By necessity the field disrupting shields had to be maintained at minimum levels during superluminal velocities. The ships were left open to damage from even a glancing blaster shot. More damaging was the disruption of the superluminal field which inevitably occurred when a blasters plasma stream penetrated it. The result was instantaneous and violent: a radical departure from superluminal that threatened to overload the inertial generators and tear the ship apart. It was a grim situation considering the frequency of the attacks, and the attrition, and none knew it more than Grand Admiral Khandar. Finally, as they suffered yet another withering ambush, there was no alternative.

The Captain of the Nived Sheur stared at the Grand Admiral in shocked disbelief, requiring Khandar to coldly repeat the order, “I said turn the fleet around, Captain. Return to the coordinates of the Terran firing. Do not make me repeat myself!”

The Captain did not need to be told again, and slowly, ponderously, the Golkos-Seer’koh fleet turned about. A series of rapid fire orders redeployed the fleet into an envelopment formation, no mean task for the Alliance pilots, but Grand Admiral Khandar would brook no argument. His Seer’koh counterpart, bobbed nervously at his side as the mass of ships turned slowly about. Only half as tall as the rakish Golkos the reptilian Seer’koh nevertheless spoke her mind, “We are taking a great risk, Grand Admiral. We have no idea where the rest of the Terran fleet is. This may be another of the Terran traps, or at best a delaying tactic. We can hardly afford the delay any more than we can another defeat.”

“Admiral, we cannot afford to allow Alexander the initiative,” Khandar interrupted. “If we allow these harassing attacks to continue our fleet will be at only fifty to sixty percent strength when we arrive at Terra, if we arrive. We must meet aggression with aggression. A sharp blow now while we have the odds in our favor will do as much to restore our own morale as it does to plant doubt in the minds of the Terrans. Those two equally important factors make this a risk worth taking!”

The Seer’koh accepted the explanation, bowing her slender head.

“Grand Admiral, we are approaching the coordinates,” the Captain informed him. “There are faint echoes on the scanners, but it is difficult to tell whether the Terrans are still there.”

“Drop out of superluminal!” Khandar ordered. The main viewer of the battleship changed expectantly. Space was suddenly filled with Terran ships and their stricken Alliance charges.

“Immediate attack! Full ahead, fire at will!” Khandar ordered.

The Terrans spotted the Alliance fleet dropping out of superluminal and were the first to fire. The New Jersey let go an enormous blast of plasma from her blaster projectors, but the ships of the Alliance now had their shields up, an impossibility in superluminal, and her target withstood the shock. Two dozen Alliance ships responded to the New Jersey’s fire, and though her shields held she glowed, a cloud of discharged plasma from the Alliance projectors whirling about her.

“Sub light engines full ahead!” Khandar told the Captain. Then getting on the ethernet he ordered, “All vessels close to attack! Prevent their escaping! Fire at will at maximum continuous rate!” The Alliance warships waded in with their superior numbers, closing ship to ship with the Terrans. It was not long before their enormous advantage in firepower began to have a telling affect.

#

To Admiral Halston on the New Jersey the situation had disaster written all over it. He involuntarily threw his arm before his eyes as the blinding flash of multiple salvoes lit up the New Jersey’s shields. The bridge swayed sickeningly, smoke curling from underneath control boards. Damage control reports flooded in, adding to the confusion. The lights flickered as the New Jersey fought back with every one of her batteries. The Alliance vessels were now so close that she had unlimited targets, and the gunnery officer could have fired blindly without fear of missing.

“Damn it!” He cursed himself for the moments of confusion and delay caused by the surrender of the Alliance warships. The main body, which he was expressly to avoid, was now completely upon him. His squadrons were caught flat footed, almost at a stop. He faced the age old dilemma of not having enough energy to fire and move at the same time. There was no choice, however. The bombardment from the Alliance ships was having a telling effect, and even as the New Jersey rocked with blaster impacts he saw ships of his own squadron limping from the scene, taking matters into their own hands. Reluctantly, but with the grim necessity of the moment, he gave the order to retreat.

The order was more difficult to carry out than it was to give. Alliance warships now interspersed themselves in the Terran squadrons. The sheer lack of space was preventing Terran ships from escaping, and while they were delayed they were caught in a murderous crossfire. Halston saw panic developing as ship after ship reported their superluminal engines wrecked. The fleet was in disorder, and the situation was deteriorating with terrible rapidity. He got on the fleet ethernet.

“To all vessels of the Seventh Fleet, those who can make the superluminal jump are ordered to do so at once! All ships without superluminal capability are to join on the New Jersey! The best of luck to all of you!” Admiral Halston watched as dozens of Terran warships suddenly made the superluminal jump, disappearing from the battle. A sense of relief gave him comfort for a moment, but then a titanic sledgehammer rang the ship. Halston felt his feet yanked from under him, and the hard plates of the deck rose to meet him. His view of the world went momentarily black, returning only in a dim grey visage punctuated by sharp painful flashes of light.

“Admiral, Admiral the Golkos Grand Admiral is calling for us to surrender!” exclaimed a voice.

Halston clawed his way to his feet, steadying himself on someone’s arm.

“Put me on the ethernet!”

Blinking his eyes in a vain effort to clear his vision Admiral Halston drew himself up. He could not feel much of anything but a tingling numbness and a dim awareness of where he was. When his sight returned it was to see himself and the scene about him. He watched himself, as on a blurred movie, standing amidst the wreckage and death of the New Jersey’s bridge. He was held up by two of his officers, and he could see the torn remnants of his face and the charred remains of his Admiral’s uniform on the ethernet viewers. When he heard his voice it was ghostly, and he could barely hear it, or believe it was his own. He listened as if hearing the words for the first time, but he knew now that what was below had already happened. It was now a part of history.

“Surrender? By the Lord of Hosts, I’ll show you bastards to how Terrans finish a fight! All ships full speed ahead and fire at will! God save the Empire!”

#

Grand Admiral Khandar watched Admiral Halston with grudging respect. He was silent. There was no need for any further orders. One by one the remainder of the Terran fleet, fifty-three ships in all, died. They fired as they died, gathered about the drifting corpse of the New Jersey like a tragic re-enactment of some last stand. No calls for surrender were given. Some ships exploded in matter-anti-matter catastrophes, others simply lost power and drifted. At rare intervals a lifeboat would escape the wreck. Admiral Khandar’s sole order the rest of the day was to leave them be, and let them go. The Terrans, as they died, caused him reflection in his victory far more than in his defeat.