Saturday Snippet: A war for an asteroid-rich star system

 

I'm sure many of my readers are familiar with my "Cochrane's Company" military science fiction trilogy.  It portrays how a fledgling space security company runs headlong into a conflict with the Albanian Mafia (in space, of course) over stolen asteroids.  The first volume, "The Stones Of Silence", describes how that conflict began, and culminates in the first bout of open military hostilities between the two parties.

The Albanian Mafia attacks using two old destroyers that they've modernized and equipped with more up-to-date weapons.  The security company must defend itself with a few very old, outdated patrol craft, plus a single corvette that's far smaller than the destroyers it must face.  However, it has the advantage of modern weapons and systems.

Here's how the first fight of that war went down.  The scene opens on the bridge of an Albanian destroyer, then the viewpoint shifts as the action continues.

“Any sign of enemy movement?” the destroyer’s captain demanded.

“No, sir,” the Plot operator replied. “There’s just the patrol craft over near Secundus’ asteroid belt, two billion kilometers from their depot ship, and another about three hundred million kilometers beyond the target group, almost on our course, sir.”

“We’ll take care of that one on our way out of the system,” the captain grunted in satisfaction. “Weapons, make sure you reserve ten missiles for her, but don’t worry about a firing solution yet. We’ll develop one after we’ve dealt with the main group.”

“Aye aye, sir,” came from the Weapons console. “What about the one over at Mycenae Secundus?”

“We’ll leave her. We want her to be able to tell others what happens when they challenge us.”

The captain gazed in satisfaction at the Plot. An enlarged section in one corner showed icons representing the gravitic drive signatures of six ships in the target group. He presumed they were the other two patrol craft he’d been warned to expect, their depot ship, and three others – probably mining vessels, visiting freighters, or couriers. At such extreme range his systems couldn’t classify them with any accuracy, or pinpoint their positions except to recognize that they were orbiting Mycenae Primus Four. Every ship would be targeted by ten missiles from each destroyer. They were still blissfully unaware of the death and destruction streaking toward them.

The captain turned to the old man, sitting in a wheelchair beside the Command console. “We’re on course, on speed and on time, Patriarch. They’re only three billion kilometers ahead. We’ll begin braking now, very slowly, at low drive power, to reduce speed before our firing pass.”

“Why reduce speed, captain?” came the labored reply. The old man was clearly not in the best of health. “Why not go at them full speed ahead?”

“It’s our sensors, Patriarch. They aren’t the most up-to-date. At one-quarter of light speed, the distortion is so great that they can’t direct our missiles as well as we’d like. If we slow to one-tenth of light speed, they’ll be much more accurate.”

“I understand. I shall mention this to the Brotherhood Council. We must see about getting you better sensors.”

“Thank you, Patriarch.” He turned to the Helm console. “Drive to braking mode, power five percent.”

Almost imperceptibly, the destroyer began to slow her headlong rush. To one side and a little behind, only ten thousand kilometers away, her sister ship detected her diminutive drive signature, and matched her actions.

—————

Cochrane ran into the depot ship’s Operating Center still buttoning his shirt, its brand-new epaulettes, bearing the single thick gold stripe of Commodore’s rank, bouncing heavily on his shoulders. His fly gaped open, and his feet were thrust into half-fastened shoes. “What is it?”

“The surveillance satellite has just detected two high-speed bogeys, three billion kilometers out, sir, plus-or-minus two percent,” the Officer of the Deck replied crisply. “They started up their drives at very low power – or, rather, they started them two-point-seven-eight hours ago, sir. That’s the estimated light speed delay between the plotted position and our own. They’re headed for us, in close formation.”

Cochrane finished adjusting his clothing as he listened, staring into the Plot display at the red warning icons. “How fast are they moving?”

“Initial analysis indicates one-quarter Cee, sir.”

His blood ran cold. Those had to be warships at that speed, or perhaps fast freighters. If the latter, they’d surely be armed. They hadn’t emerged from a hyper-jump at the system boundary, like normal traffic. Instead, they’d come out far beyond the Mycenae system, then accelerated toward it and cut their drives to avoid detection. They were clearly looking for trouble, or they would have arrived in the usual way. They’d almost certainly just begun decelerating, to make it easier to target Eufala’s ships as they drew nearer.

Dave Cousins, now wearing the four stripes of Captain’s rank on his epaulettes, ran into the OpCen, followed closely by Hui. In a few short phrases, the Officer of the Deck brought them up to speed.

Dave glanced at his boss. “Looks like they want a piece of us, sir. Only warships could be coming in at that sort of speed, and they’re not signaling their arrival. If it hadn’t been for the surveillance satellite, they’d have taken us unawares.”

“Yes. I’m suddenly very glad we spent so much money on it!” A strained chuckle ran around the OpCen. “I agree, they’re most likely warships, or perhaps armed fast freighters like Orca. The question is, who are they?”

“I don’t know, sir, but I don’t plan to wait until they get into range to find out. If they continue to come straight for us, without any arrival signal, I request permission to treat them as hostile.”

“Permission granted. You’re the local commander, Dave. You’re in charge. I’ll backstop you if you want advice.” He itched to take control himself, but that was one of the cardinal principles of delegating authority. If you did, it had to stay delegated, unless and until the person wielding it proved incapable of handling it. As the old farming metaphor had it, if you kept taking back the reins, a new driver would never learn to control the team.

“Please hang around, sir. I’d like to bounce ideas off you. Meanwhile, let me get our people ready.”

“Go ahead.”

Cousins turned to the Communications console. “Command to Communications. Send to all ships, flash priority, tight-beam transmission only to prevent interception. Unidentified vessels approaching at high speed from outside the system, intentions unknown. All ships are to remain in their present positions relative to each other. Keep drives at current power levels. Do not use active sensors, or make any transmission that might indicate we’re aware of our guests. Come to general quarters, and stand by for orders.”

“Communications to Command, recorded, aye aye, sir.”

Hui came to Cochrane’s side. In a low voice, she asked, “Can I do anything to help?”

“Stick around. You can help Dave and I. Three senior heads should be better than two.”

“Don’t you remember the old saying about too many cooks?”

Dave snorted. “Yes, but we’re not cooking.”

She laughed.

—————

“Any change?”

“Nothing visible in the Plot, sir,” the operator responded, trying to keep irritation out of his voice. Did the captain think he wouldn’t speak up if he noticed anything? Why did he keep asking the same question every five minutes?

The old man next to the command console reached up and plucked at the captain’s sleeve. As the commanding officer bent down to him, he said softly, “You are nervous, my son, and your constant questions are making your people nervous. Be calm. We are hours away yet. Set them an example of unperturbed leadership. Silence is your friend.”

The captain flushed. “I apologize, Patriarch. This is the first time I, or any of us, have led our warships into battle. It is a momentous occasion.”

“It is indeed. That is why I am here, too. Come. Let us enjoy a cup of coffee in the wardroom. Send your crew to eat and drink, half at a time, rather than let them sit and stew in their action stations. They will be better for the break.”

The captain wanted to protest, but stifled his words. The Patriarch had commanded half a dozen vessels during his younger days, before he conceived of the Fatherland Project and led the breakaway. He knew whereof he spoke.

“I hear and obey, Patriarch.”

“Good. Please push this wheelchair for me, my son. My arms grow too weak. Curse the frailty of age!”

“It will be my honor, Patriarch.”

—————

Cousins straightened, drew in a deep breath, and nodded to himself. He turned to Cochrane. “Here’s what I propose, sir.”

He marked courses and movements in the Plot display with colored lines and icons as he spoke. “They’re still coming in, but slowing down. They’ll be in range in about six hours. I want to be able to deal with a worst-case scenario, so I’m going to assume they’re destroyers, or have equivalent firepower. If we plan to deal with that, we should be able to handle anything less.”

“I agree,” Cochrane encouraged him.

“I propose to have Amanita deploy a decoy in her present position, broadcasting her gravitic drive signature at its present power level. Whoever’s out there should assume she’s still in orbit. I’ll have her creep out toward them at low power, using all her stealth systems. She should be able to reach a good firing position before they get into range of us. She can take them under fire while they’re still at extreme range, forcing them to respond to her rather than shoot at the rest of our ships. If they survive her fire, they’ll probably scoot past the planet before they can gather their wits, recalculate their firing solution and take us under fire. If any missiles come our way, the patrol craft can deal with them using their defensive weapons. After that, they can go after those ships, if necessary.”

Cochrane scratched his chin thoughtfully as he gazed at the Plot. “That’s not bad, Dave, but I’d like to suggest a couple of changes, if I may.”

“Go ahead, sir. You know more about this than I do.”

“If I were the enemy commander, I’d want to engage at less than maximum range, to be as sure as possible of hitting my targets. That’s doubly true because he has to aim at six ships, not just one. That’s a big test for any fire control system, getting the missiles close enough to their targets to be able to discriminate between them. If he’s got modern destroyer missiles, they’ll have a maximum powered range of about eight million kilometers; but they’ll take several minutes to cover that range, giving us time to activate our defenses and take evasive action. Therefore, I’d say he’s likely to close in to half, or even a quarter of that range before he fires, particularly if he figures we don’t know he’s coming. What do you think?”

Cousins sucked in his breath. “We’d be taking a big chance to rely on that, sir. What if he fires at longer range?”

“We’ll have to face his missiles, no matter what. If they’re destroyers, those two ships will be carrying more missiles between them than our corvette and three old patrol craft. We can’t match their throw weight, so we’ve got to outsmart them. I think his crews will be so busy perfecting their firing solution, and getting so close that we can’t properly defend ourselves, that they’ll be oblivious to anything else. If Amanita lets them get close enough to develop target fixation, she may catch them completely unawares. They’ll take precious seconds to break their focus on us, realize what’s going on, and defend themselves against her missiles – much less fire back at her. It’ll throw them into confusion.”

“I see, sir.” Dave’s voice was doubtful. “I still think it’s taking a hell of a chance, though.”

“Let’s come back to that in a moment. The other suggestion is, why not use the patrol crafts’ main battery missiles for defense, as well as their defensive missiles? They only have fifteen of each. Given the age and unreliability of their old weapons, let’s use them all for the most important task; stopping those incoming missiles.”

“And what if those ships survive Amanita’s fire, sir? What if they turn around and come back? If all our warships have emptied their pods, we’ll have no defense left against them except the pod aboard this ship, and we don’t have a modern fire control system.”

“No, we don’t. I’d advise reserving this ship’s missile pod for use in emergency. If they go past us, it’ll take them up to an hour to brake to zero velocity relative to the planet, then accelerate back toward us. During that time, all our undamaged ships can leave orbit, head out at full blast in the opposite direction, get up to maximum speed, then kill their drives and change trajectories using their reaction thrusters. Since they’ll no longer be emitting any radiation for passive sensors to find, the enemy will have to look for them using active sensors – radar and lidar. Those have a maximum effective range of less than a million kilometers. If we scatter far enough, fast enough, they’ll have a hell of a time finding any of us. The patrol craft should be able to escape into the outer reaches of the system. The hyper-jump-capable ships can head for the system boundary, to get away and call for reinforcements. I don’t think the enemy will waste much time looking for us. They’ll want to make their getaway before anyone else arrives.”

There was a long silence as they stared into the Plot. Finally, Hui said quietly, “May I offer a suggestion?”

“Of course, ma’am,” Dave assured her.

“You’ve laid an excellent foundation, and Commodore Cochrane has built on it. I propose…”

—————

Lieutenant-Commander Darroch adjusted his chair at the command console, and ran his eyes over the screens and readouts one last time. Amanita was in position, and the time had come.

“Command to Weapons. Commence launch procedure, as slowly and stealthily as possible. Remember, those bastards will be listening for so much as a single peep out of a mass driver. Ease those missiles out like you were walking on eggshells!”

Amid chuckles from the rest of the OpCen team, the Weapons Officer said, “Weapons to Command, understood, sir. Here we go.”

He pressed a key on his console, initiating a program that had been crafted with enormous care as Amanita crept out to her firing position. With almost dream-like slowness, the first two missiles slid very gently out of their firing tubes. As they tilted over toward the oncoming enemy, two more followed them, then two more, and more, and more. The missiles moved with seemingly glacial slowness as their gravitic drives kicked in at minimum power.

Forty-nine of Amanita’s main battery missiles crawled toward their final rendezvous. One remained in its tube, the victim of a mass driver malfunction that prevented it from being ejected. It was instantly flagged by the fire control system as unavailable, and its internal reactor was powered down. Maintenance crews would have to deal with it at some future date.

The Weapons Officer reported, “Weapons to Command. Missiles under way, sir.”

“Command to Weapons, thank you. Break. Command to Electronic Warfare. Any trace of emissions from the missiles’ gravitic drives?”

“EW to Command. I’m picking up minimal feedback, sir, but we’re right on top of them. It’s already fading as they move further away. I don’t think the enemy will have noticed them, sir.”

“Command to EW, good. Break. Command to Helm. Turn onto previously advised course, drive to three percent power. Let’s get into position to defend the other ships as best we can.”

“Helm to Command, turning onto course, drive three percent, aye aye, sir.”

Slowly, silently, Amanita crept back toward Mycenae Primus Four, staying a couple of hundred thousand kilometers below the enemy’s predicted trajectory. As she moved, her Weapons Officer prepared her fifty defensive missiles for action.

—————

The tension in the destroyer’s OpCen ratcheted up hour by hour as they drew closer to their targets. All the training in the galaxy could not alter the fact that this was the first time any of those aboard had seen combat in space. It was very different to creeping around an asteroid belt, dropping off clandestine prospector bots or recovering their harvest. Asteroids couldn’t shoot back.

The captain opened his mouth to ask, yet again, whether anything had changed, but restrained himself. Beside him, the Patriarch nodded approvingly, but said nothing.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, white traces erupted in the Plot display – and they were only one million kilometers ahead! The operator stared, shocked rigid, then almost screamed, “Missiles! Many missiles! They’re at point-blank range on a closing course! Time to intercept estimated five zero seconds!”

Instantly, the captain realized what must have happened. Their enemies had somehow detected their arrival, and laid an ambush for them. His mind racing, he snapped, “Attention! Weapons, set defensive system to automatic fire! Begin launching main battery missiles according to previous fire plan! Let’s get as many of them away as possible before the enemy’s weapons reach us!”

The Weapons Officer stammered, “B – but, sir, shouldn’t we fire at the attacker’s position?”

“No! Fire at our pre-programmed targets!” As the Weapons Officer bent to his console, pressing keys, turning dials and flicking switches, the captain added, “Those missiles weren’t launched a few at a time from a ship – their drives all kicked in together. That means they were already in space, waiting for us. The ship that launched them won’t be there anymore.”

“Understood, sir. Firing!”

Within seconds, main battery missiles began to vomit from the destroyer’s five missile pods. Their older technology could only eject one missile from each pod every two seconds, but their numbers grew as the seconds passed. Meanwhile, the defensive system assessed the incoming missiles, allocated counter-missiles to each one, and tried to fire – only to find itself blocked. The Weapons Officer had instinctively given top launch priority to the main battery missiles. Until they had all been fired, no defensive missiles could be used.

Recognizing the problem, the captain shouted orders. Flustered, the Weapons Officer canceled his first order to the launch system, and entered another – but now only the defensive missiles could fire. The main battery weapons were blocked. It took him ten more precious seconds to untangle the mess, and begin to launch alternately, first a main battery weapon, then a defensive missile. All the while, the incoming missiles tore closer at the maximum acceleration their modern, powerful gravitic drives could provide.

The first defensive missiles slashed at the incoming weapons, destroying several of them; but they were too few to get all of them. Of the twenty-five missiles aimed at the first destroyer, sixteen survived. They screamed into range, rolled to line up their bomb-pumped laser warheads at the ship, and exploded in thermonuclear fireballs. The nuclear energy devoured the warheads’ tightly-focused cones of laser rods. In the instant of its destruction, each rod emitted a powerful beam that streaked across the ten to twelve thousand kilometers separating the warhead from its target. More than half hit the ship, smashing through hull plating and frames, cutting through internal compartments, equipment, and the bodies of the crew as if they did not exist.

The destroyer shuddered under their blows. Within seconds, two of her fusion reactors went into emergency shutdown. The third reactor was not so fortunate. A laser pierced its compartment, scoring a direct hit on the magnetic field generator that kept its reaction within bounds. The dying reactor instantly vented its fusion-fueled fury upon the ship that carried it. With a blinding thermonuclear flash, the destroyer was reduced to its component atoms. Everyone aboard died instantaneously.

The second destroyer was further away, and did not suffer the problems caused by her compatriot’s hapless Weapons Officer. However, she was much slower to react. Her defensive missiles took out fourteen of the incoming weapons. Ten survived, sending their laser beams slashing into her. Holes speared through her from side to side and bow to stern, destroying the divisions between her airtight compartments, venting her entire internal atmosphere to vacuum. None of her crew were wearing spacesuits. They died at their stations as her reactors and gravitic drive shut down.

Her captain’s last desperate act, as he gasped for air that was no longer there, was to hit the ‘Abandon Ship’ button on his command console. It not only broadcast that message to all compartments – inaudibly, now, because there was no longer any atmosphere to carry the sound – but it also automatically activated the ship’s emergency beacon. Powered by a capacitor, it did not rely on the now-defunct reactors. The destroyer’s lifeless hulk sped onward at one-tenth of light speed, its passage marked by the doleful wailing of the beacon, summoning aid that could no longer avail the corpses of her crew.

—————

Amanita had no time to celebrate the destruction caused by the missiles she had so carefully laid in ambush. In fact, her OpCen crew did not even notice their triumph at first. They were too busy targeting the main battery missiles launched at the ships in orbit around Mycenae Primus Four.

At the first sign of enemy reaction, Lieutenant-Commander Darroch snapped, “Command to Weapons. Weapons free! Hit them!”

The Weapons Officer did not bother to reply. The frigate’s fire control system was already analyzing the flight of the enemy missiles. Her radar and lidar emitters sprang to life, providing more accurate targeting information. As the first enemy missiles streaked overhead, accelerating toward her compatriots, her defensive missiles rose to meet them.

Of the forty-seven main battery missiles that the two destroyers managed to fire before they were silenced, thirty-three were blown out of space by Amanita’s counter-fire. Only fourteen survived, to speed toward the five ships still in orbit around Mycenae Primus Four.

The corvette could do nothing more to help. She could only hang in space, all her missiles expended. Her crew waited on tenterhooks to see what would happen. It was up to the patrol craft now.

—————

In the depot ship’s Operating Center, Cochrane watched in fascination as the attack unfolded in the Plot display. He sat forward in his chair, hands gripping the armrests so tightly they left deep indentations in their cushioning. Beside him, Hui did likewise. At the Command console, Dave Cousins snapped orders to the patrol craft over the now-activated circuits.

From out of the welter of thermonuclear explosions, fourteen missile traces arrowed toward them. The patrol craft did not bother to get under way to meet them. There was no time for that. Instead, they launched everything they had from their orbital positions; main battery missiles first, then defensive units. Seventeen of their aged, less reliable weapons malfunctioned. The remaining seventy-three missiles, all the weapons they had except for their laser cannon, streamed out toward their targets in a ragged volley.

The longer-ranged main battery missiles reached the incoming weapons first. Bomb-pumped lasers fired, but their cones had been designed to spread across the length and breadth of a spaceship. The gaps between their laser beams were too wide to be fully effective against the much smaller missiles. Despite this handicap, six of the incoming weapons exploded under their impact. The remaining eight missiles bored in.

The defensive missiles reached them while they were still half a million kilometers from their targets. The interceptors carried thermonuclear blast warheads rather than lasers, designed to both kill nearby weapons and overload the sensors of those further from the explosion, so they could not home on their targets, or know when they had reached the most effective range to fire their laser cones. In a series of rolling fireballs, most of the incoming weapons were destroyed or blinded. The survivors streaked through the blast front. Two, their electronic brains scrambled, zoomed aimlessly past the ships to smash into the airless, desolate planet beyond them, diving into its surface at almost half the speed of light, digging deep craters, raising towering clouds of pulverized rock and dirt and dust. Two more swerved from side to side as their ruined sensors searched in vain for a target, then blew themselves up as their self-destruct mechanisms were automatically activated.

The last incoming weapon evaded every attempt to intercept it. The laser cannon fire directed at it at point-blank range came close, but not close enough. The missile turned in space to align its bomb-pumped laser cone on its target, and exploded at a range of just nine thousand kilometers.

HCS Piranha, the most recently arrived patrol craft, still working up to full operational readiness, turned into a glowing, expanding cloud of radioactive particles as her fusion reactor let go under the impact of a laser beam. All thirty-one of her crew died with her.

—————

There was an agonized, collective groan in the depot ship’s OpCen as they watched Piranha’s icon in the Plot display flare into the starburst signature of a nuclear explosion, then slowly shrink. Dead silence fell as they watched it fade away.

At last Cousins cleared his throat. There were tears in his eyes. Lieutenant-Commander Moffatt, until recently his Executive Officer aboard HCS Amelia, had been on board Piranha, supervising her working-up period prior to taking command of the entire patrol craft division.

“May… may God have mercy on Piranha’s crew. The rest of us… well, we’re still alive. Now we’ve got to clean up. Communications, signal to Amanita. Tell her ‘Well done’ from all of us. She’s to go after the second enemy ship. It appears to have no power, so the only way to track it is by its emergency beacon. She is to board, arrest any survivors, then use her tractor beam to tow the hulk back here.”

“Communications to Command, recorded, transmitting now, aye aye, sir.”

He looked at Cochrane and Hui. “Thank you both very much,” he said simply. “I couldn’t have figured out as good a plan on my own.”

“Neither could I,” Cochrane admitted. “It took all three of us.” He glanced at Hui. “Your suggestion for a stealthy missile launch, putting them in position to ambush the enemy, was the deciding factor. They might have spotted Amanita at that range, but the missiles on their own were too small a target. They were caught completely off guard.”

“Not completely,” she said sadly. “They were still good enough to get some of their weapons away. They killed Piranha.”

“Yes, but they might have killed a lot more of us. Let’s give thanks that they didn’t!”

“What now, sir?” Cousins asked.

“I want to examine that hulk. Let’s find out who they were, and what their ships were, and where they came from. We can learn a lot from the wreck. When we’ve finished with it, we’ll drop it into Mycenae Primus or Secundus, to be fuel for the star.”

“Please, wait until I can report back before you do!” Hui asked urgently. “I’m sure my superiors will want to send their own investigators to look at it.”

“All right,” Cochrane agreed, “but we’ll have to tow it to another planet in the system, so NOE doesn’t see it when their spacers arrive to take over. If it doesn’t emit any electromagnetic or gravitic signature, they won’t notice it. We’ll keep it out of sight in a parking orbit until your people get here. It’ll probably be best for them to travel aboard one of our ships, to avoid complications.”

“I think I can arrange that.”

“Very well.” Cochrane rose to his feet, forcing down a wave of sorrow for his dead people. “We’ve got a lot to do, including sending Amanita back to Constanta to load fresh missile pods. The sooner we get a real depot ship out here to handle that, the better! Oh, Dave? Another thing. Don’t mention this fight to anybody, particularly not to NOE when they arrive to take over. Pass the word to all our people to treat it as top secret. I presume those ships were sent by the Albanians – at least, I don’t know any other enemy that might have that ability. If they can’t find out what happened, it might make them think twice before trying again, at least for a while.”

The trilogy continues in "An Airless Storm" and concludes with "The Pride Of The Damned".  If you haven't already read them, I hope you enjoy them.

Peter