TWO
The battle of Vandal began forty minutes later than originally planned. Admiral Khumalo—contrary to what the staff officers said about him—was not a complete idiot. He realized that he’d undertaken a difficult, or even impossible, task which was no less than a suicide attempt. However, there was a method to his madness.
Vandal’s colonies were the most populous places in the Inner Rim. In local rare-earth-element mines, there worked more than twenty-six thousand people, who inhabited three planets and an orbital station, being also the largest and most efficient processing plant of helium-3 sourced from Gamma, the only gas giant of this system. The station had its own sub- and hyperspace drive, but it needed time to fully activate either one.
Thus, every minute gained thanks to the slowing down of the enemy could save not only the lives of hundreds, perhaps even thousands of people, but also salvage production facilities and raw material, which could prove indispensable to Humankind at the next stages of the war with the Aliens—for nobody doubted anymore that there would be a full-size conflict.
However, this wasn’t the only reason why Admiral Berkofi Khumalo decided to fight despite a very small chance of survival for his strike force and crew. Another, no less important factor—especially from the High Command’s point of view—was the need for checking to what degree alien ships exceed man-made equipment.
Having familiarized himself with Rutta’s team’s research results, which included thorough analyses of all previous battles, Khumalo undertook to explore the potential of the bizarre, bulb-like craft.
The admiral’s plan, frequently consulted with the metasector headquarters, assumed that all forces would seek to damage or—if possible—destroy one of the four alien vessels that had entered the Vandal system.
At the cost of the lives of five hundred and twenty soldiers, sailors, and officers alike, Humankind could gain knowledge that would save millions, if not billions, of people, both civilian and military. At least this was what the slant-eyed Black man argued in a long conversation with Farland and Rutta, who finally succumbed to his arguments and agreed to help develop the most effective strategy for the upcoming battle. Admiral Khumalo also ordered to reduce Silvana’s and the rest of the strike force’s cruising speed to the absolute minimum necessary to save a few percent of power and give Colonel Rutta another fifteen minutes to refine the plans.
The battle of Vandal started exactly at eighteen oh six standard time. An hour earlier, the strike force made a sharp turn and accelerated as if it was about to skirt around the incoming enemy and escape from the battlefield. The trick was supposed to make the Aliens go off the course which led straight to the inhabited planets. The enemy fell for that, and course-corrected.
Rutta was pleased—now he had tangible grounds for believing that the enemy, although so far undefeated—also made mistakes. Regardless of the outcome of the battle, Gamma’s orbital station’s crew had just gained an extra hour or two to coordinate the evacuation and make a subspace jump. That should be enough.
Unfortunately, Admiral Khumalo’s situation was far worse.
The plan was simple. In the first phase of the battle, all ships would launch kinetic rods in the direction of just one enemy craft—even if the Aliens deployed their forces so that all their “liners” could take part in the battle (the Admiralty recommended the name “a liner” for an alien bulb-like vessel, because they always flew one after another). However, twenty nuclear torpedoes would be hidden among the swarm of kinetic rods. Rutta’s staff officers decided that this was the most effective way of masking the bombardment with the kind of weapon generally used to attack spaceships with already deactivated shields. This time, however, nuclear torpedoes were supposed to ultimately overstrain the force shields weakened by the avalanche of kinetic rods and lasers.
The battleship’s and cruisers’ turbolaser batteries would open fire when the opponent concentrated on destroying the incoming rods. It was agreed that one three-microsecond volley was going to be used in order to intensify the barrage. Rutta and the two admirals hoped that six three-emitter, seven-gigawatt battleship’s turbobatteries and just as many six-gigawatt cruisers’ batteries would overpower the enemy’s force field, or at least weaken it so that the nuclear torpedoes and—preceding them by fractions of a second—kinetic rods could finish the job. Especially that the latter would be eight times more numerous than during the clash with Rutheford.
These few seconds of the battle would be crucial—not for the people taking part in it, because they were doomed no matter what, but for the rest of the Fleet, as the analysis of the effects of this massive fire would allow the High Command to develop a successful strategy, and perhaps even win the next skirmish.
Everything that unfolded in the Vandal system was watched by the High Command thanks to thirty-six drones, which the strike force had launched several minutes before the battle began, just before making a turn toward the pursuing opponent. Those small devices packed with dozens of scanners and sensors broadcasted a broadband signal to three communication stations, drifting in a safe distance of fifteen light-seconds from the battlefield. Images and data reached the headquarters with a little delay, preventing them from interfering with the course of action, but no one cared. Such far-reaching precautions helped to maintain the key transmission, and this was the most important thing now.
The Aliens, as expected, changed their formation when Admiral Khumalo’s ships appeared on their approach vector. Nothing in a hurry, though; they did it slowly and smoothly, as if AIs, not living beings, were at the controls of these ships. Two minutes before establishing contact, the alien vessels—which were flying in a linear formation—began to decelerate rapidly. The Federation’s ships, larboard to the enemy, held a tight formation around the battleship. In this position, all turbolaser batteries of larger vessels could open fire simultaneously. Spherical destroyers, on the other hand, were spinning to be able to use the full potential of the kinetic launchers as soon as possible.
The officers gathered in the briefing room held their breath, seeing that the alien formation was approaching the point beyond which the strike force could open fire. Five seconds before the bows of the bulb-like craft crossed the red line, showing an effective striking distance on the holoscreen, the shields of the Federation ships flashed blinding white. The human eye could not distinguish the microsecond impulses, and the command center computers needed a tenth of a second to locate, process, and mark all targeting vectors; for this reason, the lines connecting both formations and relevant data were displayed after the officers saw the fallout through the polarized lenses of their tactical goggles.
The Aliens concentrated on destroying the smallest vessels of the strike force, leaving the battleship and both cruisers alone. The force fields protecting the spherical bows of the destroyers were unable to neutralize such massive amounts of energy—all at once there were six holes in the wall formation. When the last of the smallest ships turned into glowing plasma, the liners flocked to the cruisers as if they wanted to leave the battleship for dessert.
Khumalo could not hear the officers shouting; he was saving every watt of energy and his quantum communicator was also off, but even if they had been right next to him, he wouldn’t have been persuaded to act faster. He waited for several—long as eternity—seconds before he gave his orders to the surviving crews: make the last turn and open fire.
Rutta gasped when he saw the swarm of red icons and, quickly replacing them, vectors swirling toward the chosen liner. Dense data strings appeared on the displays in front of him. However, he couldn’t take his eyes off the gigantic hologram where the battle drew nearer and nearer to its decisive moment.
The battleship and the cruisers gave the alien craft a mighty volley. More than seven hundred kinetic rods and all nuclear torpedoes were flitting toward the target, and another three hundred kinetic rods would be launched before the turbolasers kicked into action.
Which is going to happen in three seconds, two, one … Rutta thought, counting silently. Before he finished, the powerful batteries came to life. He couldn’t see their rays because the pulse duration was unbelievably short. Within three microseconds, the light traveled only—or as much as—nine hundred clicks, and the distance between both formations was a hundred times greater. Eight-second flight if you took into consideration the sum of the speeds of ships on both sides.
The Aliens employed no evasive maneuvers, as if they didn’t care that they were flying straight at thousands of missiles. As if they were sure they would deal with them without any problem. Their defense systems, like on Valis 11, began to eliminate targets with great precision and efficiency, even though three new rods replaced each destroyed one. Khumalo had one more ace up his sleeve, the multi-rods, which he used to the best of his abilities. The timing of the attack couldn’t have been better. When the first wave of standard, single rods evaporated, two things happened: laser rays penetrated the front shields of the liner, and incoming missiles of the second wave fired their charges, increasing the number of targets tenfold. Thanks to this clever move, torpedoes—hidden in a huge mass of kinetic rods—gained the additional chance of breaking through the enemy fire.
The alien defense systems were unable to deal with such assault fire, even though three of the four liners had joined the battle. Multi-rods carried ten two-pound wolfram rods, guaranteeing quadruple attack force. And in the next half a second, more than three hundred missiles hit home.
The force fields, weakened by turbolasers, flared up. If it hadn’t been for the band limiters, the people gathered in the briefing room could have been blinded by the sudden flash of light. However, even the best polarizers weren’t fast enough. Before Rutta regained the ability to see, at least three seconds passed.
One of the officers must have had better sight, or he hadn’t been looking directly at the hologram. The colonel didn’t care which; what mattered was that the swarthy General of Special Forces groaned with disappointment before Rutta opened his eyes again. None of the nuclear torpedoes hit the target. Rutta would learn why much later, studying the reports.
At this point, he didn’t have time to analyze the details. He squinted at the virtual battlefield. The Aliens had broken through the cannonade, turning one of the cruisers into a debris cloud. The vectors of now parallel formations resembled the double helix of DNA. The firefight continued, but it was very unequal. All the alien ships’ lasers were focused on the other cruiser which withstood barely a second before going supernova.
Rutta closed his eyes again—he didn’t want to see what would happen to the old battleship. He didn’t want to think what would happen to the inhabited star systems either. If such massive fire hadn’t been able to destroy or even stop the alien ships, the Fleet, scattered across many belts, had no chance of winning this war.
All available data would be analyzed by his subordinates in the shortest possible time, but he could already advise the grand admiral of one thing: if people in the Inner Rim were to live, they should be evacuated immediately. He saw no other choice.
Anyone wishing to stop a squadron like the one currently flying deeper and deeper into Vandal would need to have a much stronger strike force. The very thought gave Rutta the shivers. The Federation didn’t have enough equipment in the Inner Rim to protect even a portion of the border between its own territory and the uninhabited part of the Orion Arm.