Chapter 7

10 Ceti System
Flag Bridge, Gns Moshe Dyan
15/06/41 Nr 1545 Hours

Admiral Aaron Peters sat in his command chair on his flag bridge and tried not to fret. Every remaining warship in the Genevan navy, except for the scouts he had detached as escorts for the fleeing transports, was arrayed at the Delta Volantis wormhole terminus. He gazed into the main holo display, and his eyes strayed to a pair of light codes crawling across the display toward the 28 Librae wormhole terminus. Luisa had left only minutes after they had translated, and he closed his eyes for a moment at the memory of their last moments together.

They had spent as much time together as their duties allowed, to the point of going without sleep. Their parting was tearful, and even more heart wrenching than he’d feared it would be. Finally, she’d hugged him tightly while whispering his name, and then she turned and left his cabin without a backward look. He knew many of his people had loved ones aboard the ships they protected, but he’d never imagined how painful the separation would be.

Aaron sipped his stimulant laced coffee – he’d managed a few hours sleep; his flag captain had cornered him, threatened to report his lack of sleep time to the medical officer, and sent him to bed like a wayward child – and watched the display for any sign of the UN ships. They should have translated an hour ago, not that he was complaining. His frigates had deployed every spare missile from their colliers as mines around the exit vector, and every ship had full magazines. The task group was on full alert, and anyone coming through that terminus was going to get hurt.

He unlocked his seat restraint harness and stood up. There was a limit to how long he could keep his crews at battle stations in their combat suits, and they would reach it in five or six hours. After that, fatigue would set in, and...

“Contact! Mult ... oh my god!”

Aaron’s head whipped around to the display, and he watched in shocked disbelief as more than a dozen icons bloomed to malevolent life on the tactical display. His cup dropped to the deck as he threw himself into his chair and reached for his helmet. They were translating simultaneously! All of them!

Two of their cruisers had emerged too close together, and the trailing ship plowed into its consort’s flaring engine nozzles. The trailing ship’s crew section glowed white hot as incandescent exhaust particles melted the tough alloys like snow in a furnace. An instant later, the molten mass crushed the leader’s engine section, taking the engineering compartment with it and rupturing the hydrogen fuel tanks. A silent flash and the fuel tanks erupted in blue flame, destroying the warship’s power plants and shattering her radiators. The crippled vessels rolled under the inertia imparted by the collision, locked together by the force of the impact. There were surely survivors, but the two cruisers were finished as fighting units.

Three UN corvettes met a similar fate, two in a mutual collision, and one by what appeared to be mechanical failure. She appeared in two pieces, illuminated by the flare of a failed fusion reactor containment field. There was no time to gloat, for four cruisers and six corvettes had survived their commander’s brutal tactic and were reaching out to kill his ships. “Fire Plan Charlie Three!” he barked. They’d prepared for every contingency, including this insane move. He’d never really believed they’d do it, but it made sense in a cold blooded way.

The UN commander had correctly surmised that his lead ships would have been savaged if he’d put them through the wormhole one by one. Sending them all together could well have resulted in having all six cruisers survive the transit. If the leading cruiser had materialized a bit further ahead of her consort ... Aaron shook off the thought and focused on the battle.

Light codes flared to life in the display as the Genevan ships fired every available missile at the intruders in a carefully choreographed assault. Their fire control computers were linked via laser comm links that could not be jammed. Aaron had spread his ships out, englobing the terminus, so that the intruders would be attacked from every direction. Still, his ships could not live if they simply sat still in relation to the intruders, so the attack plan included a coordinated series of vector changes designed to keep their enemies in range without quite becoming sitting targets.

Maneuver was of limited utility as a defense for the larger starships. Lasers traveled at light speed, and there was simply no way to dodge. Then again, the shipboard lasers had a maximum range of thirty thousand kilometers, and, for a variety of reasons, hits were by no means guaranteed. Aaron’s ships were smaller and quicker, but the UN cruisers were well armed and more heavily armored.

Dismayed though the Terrans may have been at the loss of a third of their force, they reacted with admirable speed. Missile batteries spat their heavy ship killers at their maximum rates, and their laser batteries engaged the Genevan missiles in a deadly game of tag.

The volume of space around the wormhole terminus seethed with energies seen and unseen as the opposing forces clawed at one another. Missile warheads detonated with brief flashes of nuclear fire, birthing lethal, millisecond X-ray laser blasts that bored their way through even the heaviest armor. The Genevan missiles were faster and had somewhat better targeting systems, with updated targeting parameters. The UN cruisers shuddered as the missiles tore unerringly at their vitals. An assault force of six Genevan scouts followed on the heels of the first missile salvo, daring the counter fire to bring their laser batteries into close range. Aaron had bet that the UN force would translate nose first, just as he had done hours earlier. He had positioned the six scouts so that they would be charging into their enemies’ engine exhausts, where the sensors and weapons coverage was poorest.

The battle was scarcely ten minutes old, and damage codes appeared next to his ships in twos and threes as the UN weapons found their targets. Their missiles had poorer seekers, but the warheads were nearly twice the yield, and lasers blasted deep into the Genevan ships with every hit. The surviving cruisers divided into two pairs, each changing vector and driving outward as apexes of a flattened cone, flanked by their escorts. All of the cruisers were trailing atmosphere and debris, signs of heavy damage, but they had the range, and their fire was growing heavier by the minute.

Dyan shuddered as a laser head detonated off her starboard side, but Aaron scarcely noticed. Her damages were Hannover’s concern as her captain, and Aaron was content to leave him to it.

“We got one!” someone called four minutes later. One of the UN cruisers vomited flame and broke in half as a missile head detonated at pointblank range, close enough to actually strike the ship with the warhead itself. Her consort took a dozen hits from both shipboard lasers and another pair of missiles that had been hastily redirected from her dead sister. She shook off the damage and continued to pour fire at Aaron’s frigates.

The second pair of cruisers was under heavy attack from the scouts driving in from their rear. The escorting corvettes spotted them, but the scouts held their course and drove on toward their targets. “Tell Second Squadron to focus on Group Two,” Aaron snapped. Acknowledgements flowed back to him as he directed more fire onto the scouts’ targets in a bid to cover their attack. “There goes Aldrin, Sir!” The first of his frigates died as a laser found her fusion plant. Her broken forward section tumbled away as her stern half vaporized in a cloud of superheated plasma and burning hydrogen. Four scouts were gone, two from the assault force that continued to press their attack on the second pair of cruisers. His remaining ships were all damaged to some degree, but they continued to pour fire into the enemy cruisers.