Hegemony (15 page)

So there was the heart of the plan, and the core of his problem. He had far more firepower than the enemy knew of. But that did not mean the enemy's firepower was small. Against a single lance-ship, or a big armed transport-cruiser, it would have been an ideal ambush. Against an assault-ship...

Even so, he knew the possible tactics he could employ to win. He understood the parameters of the fight to come, could read the odds, could commit to a decision. But he also knew the consequences of being wrong, or just unlucky. Grantsen had seen his share of space battles. He had commanded his previous ship, the lance-ship
Crusading Banner
(a conventional lance-ship), both against void-runner pirates and against rebel forces of insurrectionist worlds. As a young officer he had even seen a battle between Coalition and Hegemony assault-ships, in the closing phases of the last war. For all that he had never led his lance-ship against a foe that matched her own power, not to mention a foe that was much more powerful, he had no difficulty envisioning the consequences of the battle. He had seen ships' hulls ripped apart like foil by focused laser pulses. He had seen crewmen flash-burned into husks of man-shaped carbon ash. He had seen the effects of secondary radiation; sick bays full, and overflow casualties dying in convulsions before they could be put into anti-radiation treatment. Grantsen, unlike many of his fellow officers and crew, knew exactly what that assault-ship out there could do to the
Swift Liberty
and the people aboard her. It might have been easier, he thought, if his knowledge had been only theoretical.

There were really only a few ways to press the attack, Grantsen knew. An amateur, or a very untried commander, might plan to split the two ships and place the enemy between them. It sounded good; the enemy ship would only be able to present its bow-shields towards one of them, and its laser power would have to be divided into launching interceptors in two directions at once, as well as dealing with attacks coming from two directions at once.

It seemed an ideal tactic, but in real combat, it was a trap. They would have to separate the two ships by hundreds of thousands of kilometers; almost a million kilometers, if both ships wanted to launch interceptors at their maximum range. Even at a closer combat range, all coordination would be gone; at nine hundred thousand kilometers, the lag between an order sent out and a reply received would be almost six seconds. That alone made the tactic a trap; one could not coordinate a space battle, where a single second might require a dozen decisions made through the neural interface, with a six second lag time.

And that did not account for the other dangers; if the enemy accelerated aggressively, they might be able to engage one of his ships before the other. If that happened then splitting his forces would be the biggest gift he could give his enemy; it would give the target a chance to fight two engagements, one after the other, and to have an advantage of firepower in each of them.

So his ships would have to stay close together, to coordinate their firepower and overwhelm the assault-ship. It would also let him combine his two ships' point defense firepower, increasing his ships' survivability.

That left the real tactical question: What range would his ships fire at, and how much firepower would he reserve for defense?

As far as range went, there were two options. He could fire at maximum range, or wait till he was close enough for a full salvo.

The maximum range of an interceptor was defined by how far the boost laser could focus on the interceptor's reflectors. That was far longer than the distance at which a laser could deliver killing energy against an enemy target, because the interceptor's reflectors refocused the laser energy that reached it. At half a million kilometers, an interceptor could still capture most of the energy of the boost-laser beam. It became harder and harder to keep the beam "on" at those ranges, but the interceptors could compensate with their short-lived reserve of fission fuel. Past that range, though, the laser's focus was too wide and the energy the interceptor could get from a beam, along with the interceptor's ability to maneuver, began to fall off drastically.

But to attain maximum range, two lasers were needed for each interceptor launched. A PLA, even venting coolant, couldn't keep lasing for the entire time it took to boost an interceptor to its maximum range. Instead, one PLA powered the interceptor till heat buildup forced it to shut down, and then a second PLA took over, firing at maximum power for a shorter duration to accelerate the distant interceptor on its final attack vector.

In the case of his ships, each laser pod would work only once, but in the short term it actually didn't matter much that a conventional ship's lasers would come back online after cooling down where his would be burned out; for a single long range salvo, the effect would be much the same.

Using two lasers per interceptor meant that a maximum range attack reduced his salvo by half. Of course, if the enemy fired at maximum range as well, their salvo would also be reduced.

The temptation to fire at maximum range was substantial, especially given how heavy his salvo would be, even using two lasers per interceptor. It avoided the risk of a long range enemy attack killing or crippling his ships before his own attack hit them. And if the enemy decided to wait and launch at a shorter range, it offered him a chance to destroy them without suffering their attack.

On the other hand, there was the risk that
his
attack would not be decisive. Given a chance to react, the assault-ship's enormous firepower could be a very effective defense. And if he launched first, at long range, the enemy would see the size of his salvo in time to react. They might cut power to their own long range attack and launch a full salvo of defensive interceptors.  

The assault-ship could launch two dozen interceptors in time for close range defense; that would be one-to-one odds against the maximum of twenty-four that he could send out to long range for an attack. And the huge ship also had a massive battery of secondary laser arrays, designed for anti-interceptor fire.
And
the assault-ship was a tough target, with huge bow-shields and heavy external and internal armor. It still wasn't good odds for the assault-ship, but it
was
possible that she could successfully defend herself.

And if his attack failed, he would not get another chance. The assault-ship's lasers would cool down and be ready to fire again; his weapons would require a full refit with fresh laser pods.

He might still be able to escape; his ships were much faster and the closure rate was very high. But if the assault ship did manage a second salvo while he was still in range there would be very little he could do to defend himself. 

And even if he escaped, he would have no chance of re-engaging the assault-ship. At best he would have to flee or die. So if he did escape, the mission would be a failure. The Hegemony forces would survive. The test of the new technology would be deemed a failure. Worse, the Hegemony would know something about his ships. They would not know the details of how a lance-ship had fired such a salvo; he did not intend to get close enough to the enemy to let them get that good a look at his ships. But they would know the basic facts of what his ships could do. They might also deduce that it could be done only once; why else would he run after the first shot?

On the other hand, if he managed to destroy the assault-ship, then the situation was very different indeed. He would be safe, and he would have proven the new technology.

The surviving swift-ships were a problem. The plan had made the reasonable assumption that one or two fast lance-ships would be the Hegemony's response to his raiders. Lance-ships did not usually have swift-ship escorts; they were fast enough not to need the smaller ships.

The swift-ships would be almost impossible to catch... Maybe an FTL transit to drop his ships right on top of them? That was a very hard thing to actually manage... Trying to force an FTL transit over such a short range, with such a high degree of precision, might destabilize his ships' singularity reactors and leave him drifting helpless in the face of whatever further response the Hegemony sent. No, that wasn't a realistic option.

So that meant, with two swift-ships in the system, the Hegemony would know about his ships' firepower. Very well. But if he killed the assault-ship, they would have no way of knowing it was a single-use capability; they would know he
had
that firepower, but nothing more than that. And in any event, he did not want to trade the secret away for free; let them pay an assault-ship for that knowledge.

All of that meant that he had to kill the assault-ship. And that meant a close range attack. If he waited till the interceptors' flight times were down to less than eight minutes, he would need only one boost stage for each interceptor. Each one of his lasers could power a separate interceptor. That meant that together, his two ships could salvo a total of forty-eight interceptors at once; it would take a fleet to match that attack with conventional weapons. Of course that meant that the enemy would probably get the first shot...

He could let them launch first, and then deploy a part of his interceptor capacity for defense, loading some of his interceptors with only anti-interceptor warheads. An assault-ship should be able to launch twelve interceptors against him at long range, assuming they held nothing back for defense. If he launched twelve interceptors for defense he would have a fighting chance at defending himself and still have thirty-six left for attack. And the defensive salvo would be what the enemy would expect to see; two conventional lance-ships firing together could salvo a maximum of twelve interceptors.

Overall, he thought, the odds were good. With thirty-six interceptors in an attack salvo, he would be almost sure of a kill. Of course, there was no certainty that his defensive interceptors would stop the enemy attack. But even if one of his ships was lost, half his attack, eighteen interceptors, would reach the enemy. Even if the enemy abandoned its own attack and switched its lasers to defense, those lasers would already be hot, with less firing time available.

So that was the crux of it, Grantsen thought. He could take the chance on a cheap victory and risk defeat. Or else accept the probability of losses and casualties, and with them gain an almost certain victory. Either way, there would be only this one chance.

And there was really only one answer. He had to gain the victory, or else this whole operation was for nothing. He would take his ships into close interceptor range, suffer what he must, and kill the enemy. Now that his decision was made, he felt a flow of confidence. He might not survive the battle to come; almost certainly some, perhaps many of the people under his command would not, but it was the right decision. 

Grantsen looked at the oversight officer, and let the ghost of a smile touch his face. At least if it all went wrong, there was an excellent chance that the red-coat would die too.

Segan Steven, Category Two Oversight Officer to the Coalition lance-ship
Swift Liberty,
focused for a moment on his data feed and watched the faces of the officers whom he oversaw. He could see the tension in the set of the mouths of the bridge officers, the well hidden contempt in the eyes of the commander. Well hidden enough, the oversight officer judged, and easily justified.

It was not easy to play the buffoon for such an extended deployment, but then, the job wasn't promised to be easy, and the knife one did not see was the most dangerous. The commander seemed,
seemed
to be adequate. But then an experimental ship like this was no place for mere seeming, and a disloyal officer was much more likely to be sloppy with a fool of an oversight officer to watch him than with a competent one. Some men in Segan's position would have chosen to act friendly, reasonable; to show the officers they watched that there would be no trouble for politically suspect acts or statements. It was an effective way to lure fools off their guard, but useless at finding competent traitors. So to this ship, he was a buffoon, a fool in a red coat, prancing about and speaking in tired clichés like a propaganda vid. If it lured a disloyal officer off his guard it was well worth it

But he did not think anyone on this ship was disloyal enough to really warrant deep concern. Some impropriety was tolerable, even desirable, if it came with operational effectiveness and stopped short of a destructive level. Not that he would ever show that thought, through word or deed. Ideas could be spread like viruses, amongst the tension of a warship, and men who knew their loyalty was being monitored were less likely to be infected with disloyalty; to a point. That, of course, was the other advantage of the buffoon; he could simply "fail to notice" the everyday, harmless disloyalties of the crew, allowing them to actually do their jobs while not in the least letting them think their improprieties were known of and tolerated.

It would be interesting to see this crew in battle. That, after all, was the real test of a warship's crew. It would show their effectiveness, and whether or not it was high enough to merit his continued tolerance of their minor infractions. An effective crew was worth some tolerance, after all. An ineffective crew was worth very little indeed. He'd soon see.

The interceptor was
a narrow spike of metal and ceramic, black as space and, where the hull was not interrupted by external hardware, smooth as glass. Zandy ran her hand along the hull of Interceptor CS-1-4. The ten meter long craft was nestled in its support cradle, one of six that were about to be loaded into the forward-starboard launch tubes. The interceptor was festooned with clusters of long "harpoons," nuclear detonation x-ray laser warheads fitted along the interceptor's sides. There were a dozen anti-interceptor warheads and six bigger anti-ship warheads; these were the business end of the tiny fighter-missile. Each warhead was a six-meter-long needle of metal. The anti-interceptor warheads were barely 10 centimeters in diameter, and the anti-ship warheads were only twice as wide. The x-ray lasing rods took up most of that length, with the actual warhead and short-duration fission pulse-drive crammed into the last meter of the weapon. Zandy smiled grimly. This time would be for real; no simulations now. Those warheads were live; multi-kiloton nukes for the anti-interceptor weapons and megaton-yield nukes for the anti-ship warheads.