By the Light of Distant Suns
Part One: First Contact
Heavy Cruiser HMS Apollo
Commodore Sir James Gallant watched the repeater display that served his consol with a frown. “Talk to me scope.”
“Conn, scope, FTL footprint confirmed, negative on other sensors though.” The sensor man replied, working his instruments with the deft ease of long practice.
James was a young man, about forty years old, but looking in his late twenties due to the miracle of rejuvenation. “Set for condition two” he ordered, “communications, record for the rest of the flotilla: unknown hyper foot print detected. Assume combat echelons and prepare to get under way.”
“On the disk sir” the communications woman replied.
“Send it.” James continued to look at the repeater, as if his steely gaze could compel it to provide more information. The icons representing the rest of his command, the heavy cruisers HMS Thor HMS Loki and HMS Hermes and the destroyers HMS Castor and HMS Pollux had begun to move, light codes changing to show their main drives spun up and their shields on stand by.
In his minds eye he imagined the six ships ploughing through space, the cruisers almost a thousand feet long, the destroyers around half that. His ships would glitter in the dark, great armoured spikes as they formed up into their mutually supportive formation.
Modern ships of war, at least Kingdom of Journend designed them were long and slim, their main drive unit at the rear, meant to fight by pointing its front at the enemy. Of course, ship hulls were fitted with various devices to sump the heat which would otherwise have radiated, giving away its position, at least when the drive was off.
The ships fighting prow was the most heavily armoured part of the ship, a thick layer of the hardest substance the Kingdom could produce, along with a layer of thermal super conductor and perfect reflector. The bow also housed the heaviest shield generator, and the ships primary weapons: twelve eighteen inch mass drivers which ran the entire length of the ship.
“Conn: scope, drive flare, correction: multiple drive flares” On the repeater a new source lit up, followed by another and another. Eight drive sources flared into existence on his plot, and then quickly merged into four distinct contacts. “Four battle cruiser displacement contacts sir” the sensor man looked back at James worriedly “sir… they’re not ours sir.”
James swallowed, “Get us back into stealth, I want full emission control right now… communications send this to fleet command: Sixth battle flotilla has detected multiple unknown battle cruisers penetrating the Hart System. Awaiting orders” The communications officer nodded. “Send it”
If this was what James thought, they were at war.
Journend system:
The Home World
Admiralty House
Space travel was not for claustrophobics. It seemed to be a motto that whoever had designed Admiralty House had taken to heart as they’d buried the command centre in a great bunker almost a half mile under the earth. The long corridors were narrow and for all the wood panelling, tasteful wall paper and many paintings, sculptures and photographs clearly underground.
High Admiral Dame Mary Pritchett was not claustrophobic. In fact she found the bunker comforting. Even if the planet above was to be bombarded with storms of nuclear munitions or asteroids the bunker and those like it would survive, seeds from which the Kingdom could grow once more. Stalking through the tunnels she cut an impressive figure, still attractive though clearly into her middle years, her black hair touched with grey at the temples.
Today, Mary found it less than comforting. Aids moved around her, talking quickly, making last minute preparations for this rushed briefing. The doors opened ahead and the two royal marines guarding them saluted. Mary strode in. “Ladies and Gentleman” the assembled flag officers in the room stood to attention “please be seated.”
Mary dropped into her own chair. “What do we have?”
“Ma’am” The briefing officer today was a young looking captain. “Just over an hour ago one of our patrols, the Sixth Battle Flotilla operating in the Hart system, detected four battle cruisers entering arriving from FTL. The unknowns immediately begun to deploy recon drones” A map of the Hart System showing the Sixth and the newcomers (enemies Mary was certain) “however it seems they were merely securing their FTL emergence point.”
The map changed. “Ten minutes after the first unknown contacts jumped in, more begun to arrive” on the map, the four red spots became ten, twenty, and then an almost uncountable red cloud.”
Mary took a deep breath. So, they’ve finally come still, it was necessary to go through the motions “Do we have any ID on the unknowns?”
“Ma’am, the Commander of the Sixth, Commodore Valiant believed it wisest to go immediately into stealth without using active sensors. All this is from the Flotilla’s passive sensors. “However, given the FTL vector comes from deeper within human space, and the Hart is the closest system to the rest of the colonies… well, it’s most likely that it’s them ma’am.”
Mary nodded “Very well. What’s the status of Hart’s system defence?”
The map zoomed in on the third and fourth planet. “Hart III and IV the systems settled worlds both have standard type one colonial orbital and exo-orbital defences. Garrison units are the Third and Eightieth Colonial Guard Armies as well as local forces” A full list of the planets defensive assets scrolled across Mary’s data-slate. Planets had inherent advantages in fending off attacking space vehicles, but with the force the enemy had assembled there was no way to prevent a landing.
Mary rose. “Activate the case red contingency plan.” She ordered “I’m going to have to brief the king.”
Royal Palace
The Kingdom of Journend had enjoyed its isolation. Its founders, a well funded group of Anglo-Saxon descendents from planet earth’s western hemisphere and around Jupiter, had seen the way Earth’s colonisation ships were mostly going and gone straight the other way. Their FTL colony barges had been designed to cross far larger distances than most other ships, and had done so, moving past the edges of the human expansion wave and deeper into space, crossing the galactic desert between the Orion and Sagittarius Arms and settling on a cluster of reasonably earth like planets they found there.
There they had built a society along age old lines, ruled by the family of the man who had proposed their quest, himself distantly related to the English crown: Michael Spenser, who had become King Michael the First of the kingdom of Journend.
King John the Fifth looked up at the massive portrait of the first king hanging over his offices fireplace and sighed. “I’ll try not to let you down you old bastard.” He told the painting then pressed the intercom switch “show the High Admiral in.”
His secretary an efficient young woman with short and prissily tidy blond hair opened the door, allowing his dark haired commander and two of her aids in chief into the room. “Your Majesty” the three knelt.
“Rise, rise this doesn’t sound like a time we should wait on formality.”
The three got to their feet, one of the aids pushing a disk into the room’s projector. “Majesty, a little over an hour ago, forces which are most likely to be those of the enemy penetrated the edges of the Hart system in fleet strength. Current estimates say they have over three hundred warships already in system.” The wall lit with a tactical plan of the Hart system
“And what are our assets in system?” the king asked.
“The Sixth Battle Flotilla, that’s six ships, none bigger than a heavy cruiser, which is currently shadowing the enemy force, and the planets have their own defences. Not enough to fend of such a force.”
John nodded. “Is it the enemy?”
“Majesty… it’s not entirely conformed, but who else could it be?”
John looked up at the portrait of his ancestor again sombrely.
While the Kingdom had developed in splendid isolation, growing rich on the untapped resources of the surrounding stars and trade within its own vast and rapidly growing internal markets the rest of human space had transformed. Great states rose and fell; new technology was discovered at an ever increasing rate. New ideas propagated at the speed of FTL communications impulses.
There were those who resisted those ideas, those who said that the mixing of humanity with machine, the very transformation of humanity into something other was an abomination. They used various means to repress new technology and ideas, social disapproval, then force of law, in some places terrorism, even direct military action.
But there were others, those who did believe that such new ideas should be stopped. Why, they asked should the descendents of terra be forced to be merely human? And in time they became just as wiling to use force as the conservative, purists and conservationists arrayed against them.
It had been a long war, but a decisive one: it appeared that enough youth and talent did indeed beat old age and experience.
Hart System
Heavy Cruiser HMS Apollo
James Gallant blinked awake and sat up as the phone beside his bed sounded. “Gallant speaking” he rasped.
“Sir.” The voice of his XO sounded down the phone “you should come up to the bridge. The Enemy’s doing something.”
Pretty much as soon as they’d entered the system the Enemy had broadcast a demand for surrender. That had confirmed that they were the Enemy. The words still hung in James’s head: “We offer you life everlasting, your dreams fulfilled, your bodies transformed. Submit and be changed.” He shivered. The system government had predictable refused.
The Enemy had spread out a bit, hunting down those merchantmen not close enough to the planet or an FTL transit zone to escape, boarding some and blowing up others. James had thought he’d be too wired to sleep, indeed he’d almost had to force himself into his bunk, but once there he’d dropped off almost immediately.
“I’ll be right up.” He got out of bed and donned his uniform quickly.
A few moments later James stepped onto the bridge, his executive officer, Harold kent was leaning over the shoulder of the man at the master scope. “What do we have Harry?”
“The enemy has detached several of those battle cruiser sized emissions and is accelerating towards Hart III.”
“That’s insane” unless the enemy’s battle cruiser displacement ships were much more powerful than the kingdoms running full tilt into a planets defences that way was suicide.
James watched as the scope view, provided by a network of drones and passive sensors laid around the system, as well as the Apolo’s own sensor systems. The battle cruisers thundered in towards the planet then began to rotate, accelerating up and away from the plane of the elliptic; they’d miss the planet entirely.
James blinked “what the hell?” he looked at Harry and realised his executive officer had gone ash grey.
“Sir.” The executive officer said. “They weren’t moving into weapons range of the planet, they were just giving their missiles an extra boost… a really big boost sir”
James blanched. A second wave of enemy battle cruisers began to make their run.
Near Planet Hart III
Missile
The missile spent most of its time ballistic, flung out from the mass drivers of the strike ship that launched it as part of a shoal of missiles and drones, tiny flickers of FTL keeping it in communications with the rest of them and its firing ship.
The missile was easily smart enough not to need this though; even if the link was disrupted its programming was intelligent enough to track and evade on its own. The device fired its engines, burning in for the last stage, adding as much speed as it could.
The first enemy counter missiles were already reaching out towards it, staying powered, the drones accompanying the salvo noted, for their whole flight. Perhaps the enemy weapons were too ill designed to re-light their engines after going ballistic for any length of time.
The missiles split as they enemy interceptors got dangerously close, expanding into a cloud of individual high mass projectiles. Each of those lit its tiny drive and bore in towards the platforms that were their targets.
Counter missiles and laser beams lashed out, swatting away projectiles as they closed, moving to fast to dodge without missing their targets at this range. It didn’t matter though, there were enough munitions to saturate the areas defences and dozens of them broke through penetrator pairs slamming into the station, the first blowing a hole through the wimple shielding, the second blasting through hull.
The orbital fort orbiting above Hart III’s South Pole had been the missiles primary target. The kinetic penetrators ripped through it like grape shot, breaching reactors, magazines and compartments with equal ease. As soon as they passed the outer armour the penetrators fragmented again, adding to the damage as they bounced around inside the stations armoured structure.
Ten seconds after impact, the fortress exploded.
The fleet repeated the process with every military orbital installation around Hart III and IV, radioactive debris leaving fierce trails down into the atmosphere, or tearing into civilian platforms like lethal hail.
Once the last defensive platform and been torn apart, the fleet began to advance.
Hart III
Lieutenant Gina Tuskarni took a deep breath of her suits canned oxygen as her arrow head shaped Hunter Interface fighter slide into the launch tunnel, in her head phones, the chatter of the air and orbital battle could be heard. It was Gina and her squadron mate’s almost suicidal job to take the battle to orbit.
Fortunately they’d have a lot of covering fire; the enemy had come deep into the planets defences. Now Gina and her fellows were going to make sure it cost them.
Her plane slid smoothly onto the launch rails, hooks engaging with a clunk. Gina checked her board was green a moment then satisfied leaned back, taking a firm grip on the throttle and stick. “Red One ready.”
“Good Hunting Red One, launch in three, two, one…” the launch driver fired, even with the compensator, the acceleration was enough to throw Gina back in her seat.
The Hunter blasted up from its launch tunnel, accelerating hard, main engines and JATO booster a steady thrum through the airframe. The cockpit canopy to the rear darkened, protecting Gina’s vision from the savage glare of her own exhaust. The whole view was a product of the screen implanted into the canopy of course, something as vulnerable as glass provided an unacceptable risk on an interface fighter like the Hunter.
To one side in the distance she could see Green Falls, the nearest city, green beams of friendly radar showing up on her canopy display from the friendly missile batteries defending it. The air was hazy, water thrown up by the rogue kinetic missile that had slammed into the near by ocean at a fair percentage of light speed.
Ahead and still above a flight of more conventional jet fighters was formed up, their escort during this vulnerable phase of take off.
“Red one to Red Flight: check in.”
“Red Two, check.”
“Red three, all systems go.”
“Red Four, looking good.”
“Red Flight, this is sky eye be aware an enemy RV is approaching from the south east.” A red icon appeared on her long range sensors. Already? Damn.
“Affirmative Sky Eye” Gina tagged the incoming RV for one of her defensive missiles. It was far out of range right now, she’d have to let the ground based lasers and interception missiles handle it.
As if to answer her thoughts there was a bright flash, a friendly laser beam streaking by. The RV blinked, but remained; now making a series of hard jinks. Other lasers opened up, and the RV came apart, nothing but debris… which the flight was still heading towards fast Gina yanked her stick up, as the RV’s still hot remains passed under her.
Red dots and a pulsing red strobe of orbital radar were showing up now. “Red One to Junk Dog, launch covering barrage now.”
Missiles spat skywards, ground based launchers ripple firing their entire store and then scooting away, fighter jets angled upwards, their lasers and missiles joining the flurry, the bases intercept lasers switching their focus towards the ships above and their descending munitions.
As suddenly as the take off burn had begun it ended, the silence seeming louder than the noise after the engines rumbling. They were almost invisible now, their burn ended, hurtling upwards towards the massive fleet assembled over head.
With their main drives lit to make harsh evasive manoeuvres the big ships were anything but invisible. Gina felt her heart rate quicken as she realised just how many of them there where.
The passive sensors gave her a daunting view over the world spread out bellow, fires burning where particle beams, laser or kinetics had struck (the enemy seemed fairly reluctant to use nukes) lines of missile and gunfire rising upwards.
A hundred miles another flight of Hunters from a different base was being dismembered, blasted apart by a mesh of tiny space combat drones. Kilohertz pulses of slugs ripped the planes apart, sending atmosphere, crew and reactions spraying into the upper atmosphere. “Jesus” Gina whispered to herself; as much of a prayer as she could manage.
They were above the drones now, the enemy fleet looming up ahead, enemy drop ships now dropping from hulking troop ships. Gina quickly checked she had good targeting numbers and pressed the communications over-ride stud. “Red Flight, engage!”
She pulled the firing trigger on her joy stick. The bay opened and the launch traipse thumped forward, hurling a trio of big anti space missiles towards the target. The missiles lit their thrusters, thundering forward then splitting into a cloud of submunitions many of which would hopefully slam into the enemy star ships and landing pods ahead.
Gina yanked her fighter round, diving away as enemy fire lashed out, superhumanly quick; Red four vanished as a laser burned across him. The closest enemy star ship was hit, its hull torn open by an ASAT payload, air and debris venting into space.
Gina was to busy to really notice though, diving down, down into the atmosphere, into the protective embrace of the planets defences and safety…
Day two
Hart System
Cruiser HMS Apollo
James watched the repeater, dozens of asteroids spun around them, dead lumps of cool stone, they were widely separated, but James still found the experience nerve wracking, they were flying on passives only, and at high speed… there could well be large pieces of debris in their way.
What were really straining James’s nerves though were drones. The enemy had launched tens of thousands of probes and while a solar system is a big place, the chances of one stumbling upon his little squadron, stealth or no stealth continued to increase.
There only hope was that when they finally were spotted they were far enough out that the enemy couldn’t bring get any heavy combatants out to them before they could escape.
As it was they were right on the line, possible even clear, but James didn’t like to bet on it, he had a sharp watch kept.
Something lit up on the scope “Active radar ping! Active radar ping!” yelled the sensor man.
“Zap it!” James yelled
“Lasing” bearing lasers lashed out, burning the probe like a moth in a candle flame.
That tore it. “Conn, scope, drive plumes in bandit twenty nine.” That was the nearest group of enemies “they’re accelerating and heading this way.”
“Helm, give me full thrust.” James ordered. The ship rumbled as the drives cut in, throwing out iron red flame behind as they accelerated sharply. James sat back in his chair, almost, almost, almost. They’d almost made it out of the system free.
Now it looked like he could well have a fight on his hands “How long till we reach the pop out point navigation?”
“Four hours sir” the navigation officer said immediately.
“And how long till bandit twenty nine catches up with us?”
“Three hours thirty.”
Bandit twenty nine, a pair of battle cruiser and their escorts, and they’d need to survive against it for half an hour, not to mention clean out whatever was at the pop out point.
James swallowed. This was going to be bad.
Three hours, thirty eight minutes later
All eyes were on the display, the red sphere showing the battle cruisers weapons range gradually creeping towards them “stand ready countermeasures.”
“Countermeasures stands ready.”
James tried to think of an idea. The battle cruisers could put out more weight of missiles than him, and while the drive flame would prevent any of them coming directly up his ships tail pipe it wouldn’t be very hard for a high acceleration missile or drone to finish them off through their sides or decks.
The range counted down… “Enemy units have opened fire””
The enemy ships bow drivers spat fire, rounds flung out by a combination of electromagnetic and chemical force, drives lighting as they came flee, hurtling in towards the fleeing flotilla.
For all their speed the missiles were still evasive, pulling a series of hard, unpredictable turns. They were big, fast, and their movements far more graceful than anything his interceptors could manage.
But the range was long; there’d be dozens of chances. The automatic features on the Apollo’s defence system engaged automatically, spitting out long range missiles. The ships of the kingdom made no distinction between an interceptor and a ship killer, except from a crafts bow guns, a nuke was a nuke, and if you got it close enough it could blow through shields and armour no matter what carried it.
James watched this part of the battle out of his hands. They were far out of the range of any weapon on his ship save for the bow drivers and James wasn’t minded to turn the ship around to bring those to bear, not if it meant being overhauled.
The battle cruisers behind were firing on automatic, missiles spooling out of the tubes to face them. On his repeater there were a series of flashes as nukes went off, prefragmented shrapnel tearing the incoming munitions apart. They bloomed brightly… anti matter.
A scatter of munitions broke through the web of interceptors, splitting open to spit out a wave of submunitions, short ranger interceptors reached out then those too split, a web of tiny weapons closing around the formations from all sides, then the interceptors struck them down.
There was a thump, artificial gravity blipping for a second, and red lights flashed on in a dozen sections “Report?”
“Some kind of X-ray laser hit! The enemy weapons have bomb-pumped X-ray lasers… minor damage to outer compartment ten.”
“Pollux is hit… she’s hit bad.”
“Communications incoming from Pollux”
The captain of the Destroyer appeared on screen. James looked at the bloody face of the first officer “We do our duty sir.” The transmission cut to static as the ship swung around to face the onrushing enemy capital ships, its spinal drivers hamming out rapid fire pulses as it coasted. Every missile launched along her hull, the command crew knew they were doomed, no point in saving anything now.
The waves of munitions approached… then crossed, Pollux had fired to kill, ignoring the death racing in on it. Enemy counter missiles spat out, the black between the two forces flashing white for a moment, washing out the scope, and then cleared. James heard a sigh. The enemy force was untouched.
The enemy’s missiles reached the stricken destroyer. Some exploded short, caught by lasers, the rest slammed in from all directions, avoiding her bow and stern, detonating to lances of anti-matter as they came in close, penetrating the ships shield in a dozen places.
The Pollux glowed brightly on the repeater, far hotter than normal, and then blew, the entire ship splitting apart in a spray of superheated atmosphere and radiation.
James sat back. Then scope spoke “Sir! The FTL point!” James glanced down at his display and blinked. Ripples of exotic particles flashed away as space seemed to rip apart, dozens of ships emerged, great long shapes, even bigger than their pursuers: Battleships!
“IFF confirmed, they’re friendlies… and hailing sir.”
James almost staggered “put them on.”
The communications screen lit with handsome man in his biologically early thirties. “This is the Ninth Space Fleet… you seem to be in a spot of bother Commodore”
By the Light of Distant Suns
Moderator: LadyTevar
-
Falkenhorst
- Jedi Knight
- Posts: 572
- Joined: 2002-09-02 01:14am
- Location: Wisconsin, USA
My congratulations on the beginning of an excellent story. It reminds me of the Starfire novels by Dave Weber. Will you be posting any background info?
Falkenhorst
BOTM 15.Nov.02
Post #114 @ Fri Oct 18, 2002 4:44 pm
"I've had all that I wanted of a lot of things I've had
And a lot more than I needed of some things that turned out bad"
-Johnny Cash, "Wanted Man"
UPF: CARNIVAL OF RETARDS
BOTM 15.Nov.02
Post #114 @ Fri Oct 18, 2002 4:44 pm
"I've had all that I wanted of a lot of things I've had
And a lot more than I needed of some things that turned out bad"
-Johnny Cash, "Wanted Man"
UPF: CARNIVAL OF RETARDS
-
Master of Cards
- Jedi Master
- Posts: 1168
- Joined: 2005-03-06 10:54am
