Center of Gravity (25 page)

“Admiral Koenig?”

It was Ramirez, on the communications watch.

“Koenig here.”

“Sir… we’ve intercepted an incoming emergency message. I think you should hear it.”

“What’s the source?”

“A Sleipnir-class mail packet, sir. Origin is 70 Ophiuchi. The packet dropped out of metaspace and started broadcasting immediately. They’re flashing Priority One-Urgent. Audio only.”

“Patch it through.”

Koenig heard the hiss of interstellar static, overlaid by a raspy voice. “. . . large force—Turusch warships and Nungiirtok ground forces! The main colony is under bombardment both from orbit and by ground forces. We need immediate help. Repeat, we need immediate help! I am en route to Fleet Base Earth. I request emergency docking clearance, and reinforcements for the Osirian colony. Message repeats. Priority One Urgent! This is Lieutenant Quinton, 2/2 Marines on Osiris. Five days ago, the Osiris colony came under attack by a large force—”

Koenig cut off the voice, and closed his eyes for a moment.
Shit! Not now! Not
now!

“Time delay to the mail packet?”

“Thirty-five minutes, sir,” Ramirez replied.

Which meant that Quinton’s radio transmission wouldn’t be heard yet on Earth for something like five hours.

Which put Koenig in one hell of a nasty position.

Osiris—the 70 Ophiuchi system—lay just 16.6 light years away from Earth. This represented a serious and alarming change in enemy strategy. For more than thirty years, the Sh’daar and their allies had been nibbling away at the Confederation’s outer perimeter. It had started in 2368 with the disastrous Battle of Beta Pictoris, 66 light years from Sol, and since then they’d been working their way inward system by system until they’d gotten as close as Eta Boötis, just a few months ago.

Eta Boötis was still 37 light years from Sol. Now, though, the Sh’daar alliance had staged two strikes into the very heart of the Confederation—the attack on Sol in October, and now this: an invasion of a Confederation colony that was, as astronomical distances go, right next door to Earth.

The Confederation Senate, when they got this news, was going to have a collective meltdown.

Koenig had worked under the Senate’s authority for long enough to know exactly how things were going to play out. His authorization to conduct Operation Crown Arrow would be withdrawn, his current orders canceled. The star carrier battlegroup would be ordered to remain within the Sol System to protect Earth.

He doubted that Quinton’s request for reinforcements would be granted. A counterstrike
might
be ordered… but only after 70 Ophiuchi had been reconnoitered, and the enemy forces there thoroughly scouted out. It was all too likely that any Confederation counterattack would be too little and too late, striking at 70 long after Osiris had fallen to the enemy.

The same thing had happened before, a pattern repeating again and again, at Rasalhague, at 37 Ceti, at Sturgis’s World, at Everdawn.

Koenig mindclicked a control and opened a 3-D map in the space in front of his desk. The volume of space occupied by the Confederation was represented by a lopsided blue egg filled with several hundred brightly lit stars containing colonies, bases, and outposts, scattered among several
thousand
ghosted stars, within that same volume of space, that had not yet even been visited by humans. A bite had been taken out of that egg, however, in the general direction of the constellation of Boötis.

Not only had the attack at 70 Ophiuchi leapfrogged past dozens of human colonies, it had also swung a full 150 degrees around the Confederation’s borders, striking from almost the exact opposite side of human space. The capture of Osiris demonstrated that the Sh’daar alliance could freely hit any point within the Confederation, striking from any direction.

There were no front lines in this war… no safe areas in the rear, because there
was
no rear.

Koenig thought about strategy… .

In warfare, there were a number of principles key to managing and winning a prolonged conflict. Basic to these was the principle known as center of gravity.

Centuries ago, in warfare conducted strictly on the surface of Earth, the concept had been called center of mass. If a general wanted to punch through an enemy’s defensive line, he needed to know where the enemy’s center of mass was, the point where he had most of his troops and equipment, and he needed to maneuver his own center of mass in such a way as to catch the enemy at a disadvantage.

In the three-dimensional maneuvers of fleets in deep space, the idea was not so much center of mass as center of gravity. A small force sent deep into enemy territory could have an unexpectedly large effect on the enemy’s disposition. The Sh’daar were doing that by capturing Osiris, almost at the center of Confederation space. They wanted the human defenses to pull back close to Sol… either so that other human colonies were left defenseless or, worse, to put the entire human fleet in one place, where it could be destroyed once and for all.

Koenig had the uneasy feeling that this last was exactly what they were planning. By striking so deep into the heart of the Confederation, they hoped the human defenders would pull back all of their battlefleets and carrier groups to protect Earth. A single battle might wipe out or scatter all of the Confederation’s military assets, and leave Sol defenseless. A three-decades-long war could be ended in a single strike.

In fact, Operation Crown Arrow had been planned as a similar shift in the conflict’s center of gravity… a strike so deep into Sh’daar-controlled space that the enemy would be forced to pull back its fleets, and perhaps abandon planned operations inside Confederation space. The risk was high, obviously, but the payoff, if it worked, would be tremendous.

The problem was to get the Confederation Senate—shortsighted, politically motivated, and contentious—to see it that way.

Koenig placed his hand on a desk contact and began pulling in data. The positions of other battlegroups and fleets appeared on the map before him. Most were within the Sol System already.

Damn it, the Confederation had been on a defensive posture since the very first battle of this war in 2368. Wars could
not
be won by assuming a strictly defensive posture and waiting for the enemy to attack. But if the Confederation waited much longer, they wouldn’t have the fleet assets to even put up a defense. They needed to go onto the offensive, and they needed to do it
now
.

The strategic imperative seemed obvious to Koenig… but he also knew that the Senate would see the situation only in terms of protecting Earth from this new threat. The battlegroup would be ordered to stay put.

And for that reason, Koenig was determined to move before they could give him orders that he would have to disobey.

The Senate Military Directorate included military men who would see what he was doing, and Carruthers and the Joint Chiefs would probably support his decision as far as they could. Still, the decision would, in all probability, end his military career.

And if he was wrong, if he took a sizable fraction of the Confederation fleet out beyond the Confederation’s borders and Earth was destroyed or conquered, he would be reviled as a traitor, or worse.

It was neither an easy nor a pleasant decision to make.

“Captain Buchanan?”

“Yes, Admiral.”

“Ship’s status?”

“We’re at full power and ready for Alcubierre interface on your command, Admiral. All members of the battlegroup report ready for FTL.”

“I take it from that that you heard the message that just came through.”

“Yes, sir. Ramirez linked me in.” Buchanan hesitated, then added, “If it helps, Admiral, I fully support—”

“Belay that, Randy. No sense in putting your career on the line too.”

Not that it would help. If things turned out badly, the Confederation government—whatever was left of it—would be looking for scapegoats. Koenig’s decision might be seen as cowardice in the face of the enemy or, at the least, an attempt to circumvent his lawful orders.

Orders. He stated that he was to wait at the fleet rendezvous at Pluto until “on or before 9 January,” two more days from now, before executing the first phase of Crown Arrow. That phrase gave him a bit of leeway. He could leave early, though the assumption had been that he would stay until all possible reinforcing units could join the battlegroup.

“How many ships are we still expecting, Randy?”

“The
Jeanne d’Arc
and eighteen PE warships are still planning to rendezvous with us on the ninth, Admiral. And we’re waiting to hear if the Chinese are going to send along a contingent as well.”

The Chinese were always a wild card. The pan-European force would be a nice addition, but…

“We’re not going to wait. Pass the word to all ships. We will maneuver clear of Pluto’s gravity well and engage our Alcubierre drives once we reach a flat metric. Course will be toward galactic north for five hours in order to clear the solar plane, then emergence and realignment for Arcturus.”

“Aye, aye, Admiral.”

“Mr. Ramirez?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Speed-of-light lag to Earth.”

“Five hours, ten minutes, fifty-one point five seconds.”

“Very well. Prepare a message for delayed transmission to Earth.”

“Aye, Admiral. Recorders running.”

“Message begins. For Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Senate Military Directorate, Earth, this is Rear Admiral Alexander Koenig, commanding the reinforced Confederation Star Carrier Battlegroup
America
.”

He paused, thinking over what he wanted to say. Ramirez would edit out any awkward hesitations, and he needed to make his case clear. The chances were good that it would be read at his court-martial.

If any of us survive this
, he thought.

“At 1435 hours Terran Fleet Time, 7 January 2405, I am initiating Operation Crown Arrow. I do this in the firm belief that striking deep into enemy-held space will force the enemy to interrupt his current military operations against Earth and the Sol System, and alleviate some of the pressure he is currently bringing to bear on the Earth Confederation. It is my intent to do as much material damage to enemy warships, bases, and supply depots as possible, in order to shift the center of gravity of this war away from Earth and into Sh’daar territory.

“I am making this decision on my own authority, and the full responsibility is mine, and no one else’s.

“I will, of course, attempt to communicate with Confederation forces from time to time by fleet packet… but the nature of extended interstellar campaigns, of course, is such that you will probably not hear from us for some time to come.

“Godspeed to you all. With luck, you’ll know that what we’re doing is working when the enemy begins pulling back from Confederation space.

“This is Rear Admiral Koenig, commanding Interstellar Carrier Battlegroup 1, ending message.”

He played the message back for himself, listening critically. He’d deliberately made no mention of having heard the news from 70 Ophiuchi
before
giving his orders. The astronomically savvy among them, though, would realize that he’d heard the news and left before Earth could send him new orders. His career, clearly, would be over with this one… but he hoped to be able to take the fleet a very long way indeed before any new orders could catch up with him. Geneva would know he’d ordered the battlegroup out of orbit long before the ships would be able to enter metaspace… but he also knew how Geneva worked. They would consult, they would debate, they would consider. They would talk to the Joint Chiefs… and Admiral Carruthers, he knew, would do his best on Koenig’s behalf.

With luck, he would be unreachably tucked away into metaspace and outward bound before orders to stay—or orders calling for his resignation—ever reached him.

“Mr. Ramirez, you may transmit the message.”

“Aye, aye, Admiral.”

“Captain Buchanan?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Time for us to cross the Rubicon. Make to all ships in the battlegroup. Break orbit and engage gravitic drives, five hundred gravities’ acceleration, galactic north, until we reach a flat metric.”

“Understood, Admiral. We are breaking orbit.”

His reference to the Rubicon was deliberate. When Caesar had crossed the Rubicon, the limit past which no Roman general was allowed to bring his armies without challenging Rome’s authority, he’d known there was no going back. A similar boundary was being crossed now.

The frigid, white face of Pluto and its coterie of moons slid off to starboard, then dwindled rapidly into the emptiness of star-strewn space.

Chapter Thirteen

29 January 2405

Emergence

Arcturus System

0848 hours, TFT

Space exploded into being once more, as
America
dropped clear of metaspace in a nova-brilliant burst of photons. Ahead, a brilliant yellow-orange beacon blazed against the background stars—Arcturus, 36.7 light years distant from Sol.

The rough outline of the Alcubierre Drive had been worked out as long ago as the 1990s, by the Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre Moya. Essentially, where it was impossible for anything, mass or energy, to travel faster than light, there was no such restriction against space itself breaking the ultimate speed limit of the cosmos. Exactly that had happened, in fact, during the early life of the universe, in the so-called inflationary phase immediately after the Big Bang. Alcubierre had pointed out that a hypothetical spacecraft might enclose itself in a bubble of spacetime, motionless relative to surrounding space, while the bubble moved forward at multiples of
c
.

Of course, in the last decade of the twentieth century, no one, even Alcubierre himself, had any idea how this might actually work.

The engineering details had been worked out in the mid-twenty-second century, after the development of the gravitic drive. In order to engage the Alcubierre faster-than-light drive, two things were necessary—a flat spacetime metric, meaning no nearby planetary or stellar bodies gravitationally bending local space, and an initial velocity approaching that of light. As a ship approached
c
under normal gravitic drive, its mass approached infinity, and the Alcubierre Drive utilized this relativistic mass to form the FTL bubble, folding space around the ship and accelerating it to velocities faster than light.

Upon emerging from Alcubierre Drive, the ship’s velocity remained what it had been inside the spacetime bubble—essentially zero relative to the region of space within which it had initially engaged the drive. The velocity of the spacetime bubble bled off as energy—an intense burst of EM energy from radio to gamma-ray frequencies, as well as gravitational waves, immense ripples through local spacetime.

There was no way, then, to disguise the emergence of a starship from metaspace—the term for the folded-off interior of an Alcubierre spacetime bubble. As
America
dropped into normal space, a dazzling flash of radiation flared with the momentary glare of an exploding star. Other ships in the battlegroup were emerging as well, though they tended to be scattered across a rather large volume of target space. The light from some of them would not reach
America
for some minutes yet.

“Okay, everyone,” Koenig said from his seat in the CIC. “On your toes. We’ve just rung the front bell.”

“Stellar drift at one hundred twenty-two kilometers per second,”
America
’s navigation officer announced. “Two-three-three by one-zero-five by five-one-one.”

The star Arcturus, with its family of planets, was an oddball in Sol’s galactic neighborhood, cutting across the current of local stars instead of traveling with them. It was believed to be an outsider, a star originally belonging to a small galaxy devoured by the Milky Way some millions of years ago and now literally just passing through. As a result, its velocity was considerably higher than that of local space, and the battlegroup was going to have to accelerate hard to match velocities with the system.

America
had emerged some 21 AUs from the gas giant Alchameth. In less than three hours, then, the Turusch ships gathered around the gas giant and its planet-sized moon would detect the energy surge as it crawled across 3.1 billion kilometers at the speed of light. Until then, unless the enemy had scouts or pickets lurking in the system’s outskirts, the Confederation fleet was maneuvering unobserved. At one hundred gravities, a nudge from the ship’s drives, it took just over two minutes to match velocities with the local system.

With
America
traveling at the same velocity and in the same direction as the star, the drives switched off. Star carriers could not launch fighters while under acceleration. The tiny vortex-singularity of intense gravitational moment projected from instant to instant ahead of the carrier’s shield cap would have caught any emerging fighters in its maw and crushed them in a flash of X-rays. The gravitic projectors were off as the first two Starhawk fighters loaded into the launch tubes.

In CIC, Koenig turned to Captain Barry Wizewski, the carrier’s CAG. “Commence flight operations.”

“Commence flight ops, aye, aye, Admiral,” Wizewski replied. “Flight decks! Commence fighter operations. Launch ready spacecraft.”

VFA–44
Dragonfires

Arcturus System

0903 hours, TFT

Lieutenant Trevor Gray leaned back within the embrace of his Starhawk’s cockpit, going through the downloaded mantra designed to help him relax. His in-head display counted down the seconds to launch.

America
possessed two flight launch tubes running 200 meters down the carrier’s spine and out through the center of the forward shield cap. Fighters were autoloaded into breech locks in the spine two by two, then magnetically accelerated along the launch rails at seven gravities, emerging through the shield cap 2.39 seconds later, traveling at 167 meters per second.

Gray was fifth in line for Tube One, his fighter wrapped in darkness as he waited in the queue. It was very much like being a bullet in a magazine, waiting to be loaded and fired.

He felt the jolt and slight sideways motion as his Starhawk advanced a step with each launch. It took about five seconds for the railgun magnetics to recycle, which meant the waiting pilots felt a
chunk
–pause–
chunk
–pause rhythm as fighter after fighter hurtled out from
America
’s forward launch tubes ahead of them. Gray then felt the sensations of his fighter slipping into Tube One’s breech lock.

“Dragon Nine,” a female voice said in his head, “you are go for launch in three… two… one… launch!”

Acceleration pressed him back into his seat, and his vision dimmed… .

. . . and then he was out in the empty black of space, the crushing pressure of seven gravities suddenly gone.

“Dragon Nine clear,” he said.

“Dragon Ten clear,” Katie Tucker added as she emerged from Tube Two.

A check aft showed the vast, dark dome of
America
’s shield cap receding in an instant to a point of light as Gray’s fighter fell sunward at better than six hundred kilometers per hour. In another instant, even the star was gone, lost among clouds of real stars strewn across emptiness.

Switching to forward view, Gray saw Arcturus gleaming brilliantly directly ahead, a small, intensely bright disk. A navigation reticule marked the location of the objective, off to one side of the orange sun.

Gray let his Starhawk drift until Tucker drew up alongside, and then the two accelerated together, falling in with the other fighters that had already launched. Green-diamond icons marked the other ships, each with a string of alphanumerics giving ship number and pilot id. More and more fighters joined the tight phalanx already falling in-system, until all twelve Starhawks were in tight formation.

“Dragonstrike,” Commander Marissa Allyn said over the squadron comnet, using the codename for this op. “Configure for high-G flight.”

The SG–92 Starhawk possessed transmorphic hulls that allowed them to change their outward configuration in flight. They’d launched as twenty-meter black needles, each with a central bulge housing the pilot and the control and weapons systems. At Gray’s command, his Starhawk reformed itself, the complex nanolaminates of its outer structure dissolving and recombining into a blunt and mirror-smooth egg shape with a slender field-bleed tail-spike off the stern. Technically, this was boost configuration, but the pilots, with the humor typical of military personnel, routinely called it “sperm mode.” His Starhawk was now only seven meters long, not counting the field-bleed spike astern, and five wide, though it still massed twenty-two tons.

“Dragonstrike Leader, Dragon Nine,” he reported. “Sperm mode engaged. Ready for boost.”

“
America
CIC, this is Dragonstrike,” Allyn said. “Handing off from PriFly. All Dragons clear of the ship, formed up, and ready for PL boost.”

“Copy, Dragonstrike Leader,” a voice replied from
America
’s Combat Information Center. “Primary Flight Control confirms handoff to
America
CIC. You are clear for high-grav boost.”

“Acknowledge squadron clear for boost,” Allyn said. “Keep the lights on, people. We’ll be back.”

“Roger that, Dragonstrike. You’re the sharp, pointy end of the stick, but we’ll be right behind you.”

“Dragonstrike,” Allyn said over the squadron’s tac channel. “Engage squadron taclink.”

Gray focused a thought, his left hand on the palm contact. The onboard AIs of all twelve fighters were interconnected now by laser-optic comnet feeds. The squadron could move, could maneuver, could
think
as one.

“And gravitic boost at fifty K,” Allyn said, “in three… two… one…
punch
it!”

A gravitational singularity opened up just ahead of Gray’s Starhawk, a focused bending of space that inexorably dragged the starfighter forward. The singularity winked out, then switched on once more a fraction of an instant later. And again. And again.

Gray was falling now under an acceleration of fifty thousand gravities, but, since the projected gravitational field affected every atom of his gravfighter uniformly, Gray felt none of the acceleration he’d experienced during the diamagnetic launch from
America
.

He was in free fall, his speed increasing by half a million meters per second with each passing second. The stars remained unmoving despite his velocity. After one minute he was falling forward at three thousand kilometers per second, or 1 percent of the speed of light.

And in ten minutes he was swiftly approaching the speed of light itself.

CIC, TC/USNA CVS
America

Arcturus System

0918 hours, TFT

America
had dropped into Arcturus space at precisely 0848:16.4 TFT, and the light announcing her arrival had started spreading out in all directions. Thirty minutes later, other ships in the battlegroup up to thirty light minutes out could see her. As other ships continued to arrive, the light bearing news of their arrival began spreading out across local space in overlapping bubbles.

As each ship became aware of the position of other ships in the battlegroup, optical communications lasers flashed out, linking the fleet into an interconnected whole.

America
’s Combat Information Center was the heart of the battlegroup’s command, control, and communications, the nexus of that vast web of precisely aimed laser-optical communications, but the web’s growth was agonizingly slow. The CBG ships were emerging within a zone nearly a light hour across, and the speed of light imposed a hindering time lag to the fleet’s organization.

“How are we doing?” Koenig asked, joining a knot of CIC officers floating above the main tacsit display, a tank three meters across filled with glowing, colored icons marking the CBG fleet.

“Twenty-three ships have merged and linked in, Admiral,” Commander Sinclair announced. “We estimate that all of the others have arrived by now. We just can’t see them yet.”

Koenig nodded. Space combat was dominated by the speed-of-light time lag.

The other ships, having established communications with
America
, were beginning to close with her. One by one, the vessels aligned themselves within a few thousand kilometers of the
America
and then gradually began accelerating.

At five hundred gravities, Alchameth and its moon, Jasper, were nearly fourteen hours away. The fleet would accelerate steadily for half of that time, at which point they would be traveling at four-tenths of the speed of light. They would then begin decelerating for the second half of the journey into circum-Alchameth space.

Five fighter squadrons had been launched so far—the Nighthawks, the Impactors, the Dragonfires, the Night Demons, and the Black Lightnings; the remaining two, the Death Rattlers and the Star Tigers, would be held in reserve for combat space patrol during the CBG’s close passage of Alchameth. Only the Dragonfires and the Night Demons had been fired off through the launch tubes. The rest had dropped from the centripetal launch bays and were accelerating now down the first two squadrons’ wakes.