He smirked. “Good thing we were told not to launch any offences, right?”
Penny had to chuckle. If they’d taken everything in the spy’s message at face value, it would have seemed the perfect time to launch a counteroffensive, which would have left Morrison weakened when the rebels returned to the system. As it was, aristocratic indecision and bureaucratic stonewalling had worked in their favour. It would have been laughable if it hadn’t been so lucky.
Wachter turned his attention back to the tactical display. “General orders; target the superdreadnaughts — and only the superdreadnaughts. Everything else can wait.”
“Aye, sir,” the tactical officer said.
“The rebels are locking weapons on our ships,” the sensor officer snapped. Red lights flared across the display as the rebels locked on. “They’re preparing to fire!”
Wachter and Penny exchanged glances. “Interesting,” Wachter mused. “They’re out of range. And they can’t flicker into range, not within the gravity shadow. I wonder what they have in mind.”
He turned back to the tactical officer. “Bring our point defence to full alert,” he ordered. “If they have extended their missile ranges, I want to be ready.”
Penny wasn’t sure she believed it. The problem with extended missile ranges was the same as firing missiles from standard extreme range. Enemy point defence systems had longer to track the missiles and plan out their interceptions while the missiles were on their way. It was odd for the rebels to do something stupid… and firing missiles from extreme range would be stupid. Unless, of course, they had boosted their missile swarms by an order of magnitude. A few hundred thousand missiles would seriously damage the fleet, no matter when and where they were fired.
“True,” Wachter said, when she said it out loud. “And the rebels have never been stupid. And that means they have something up their sleeves.”
“Experimental missiles are locked on target,” the tactical officer said. “Set one is ready for launch.”
Colin nodded, grimly. The Geeks had worked wonders, as always, but they had only been able to produce a few hundred of the experimental missiles. Even their modified ECM projectors only numbered in the tens. Given time, they could probably produce thousands of them… but by then the Empire would have rebuilt its shipyards and started churning out new superdreadnaughts. And the experimental missiles wouldn’t be enough to tip the balance.
“Fire,” he ordered.
There was a second disadvantage with the experimental missiles; they were over twice the size of the standard missile. They couldn’t be fired from internal tubes, they had to be mounted on the hull. And if someone managed to land a shot on the hull before the missiles were launched… Colin had considered the risks, then chosen to accept them, but he hadn’t been too pleased about it. There were just too many unknowns involved. If he’d had his way, there would have been months of tests before the systems were deployed in combat.
The superdreadnaught shuddered, gently, as the first barrage was launched. It looked pitiful compared to the massive barrages both the rebels and the loyalists had deployed in the past, but it was fired from well outside standard missile range. The missiles picked up speed rapidly as they flashed towards their targets, advancing on the Imperial Navy starships with deadly intent. Their size made them easier targets, Colin noted dispassionately. The Imperial Navy had to be looking forward to wiping the entire barrage out .. unless, of course, they realised there was a trick. Admiral Wachter would definitely realise that there was a trick.
But what could he do about it?
“Three minutes to scatter, sir,” the tactical officer reported. “Seeker heads are updating their own programming constantly, as per projections.”
Colin gritted his teeth. There were good reasons against building anything too smart, he knew, horror stories that dated all the way back to the days before the Empire. An AI smart enough to think on its own might start asking why it had to take orders from the fleshy humans surrounding it — or, even if it didn’t start acting malevolently, it might ride roughshod over human interests and concerns to get what it wanted. But the Geeks didn’t seem to care about the risks. Salgak had even talked about the possibilities of using AI to reform the Empire’s economy and make the jump to a post-scarcity society.
“The Thousand Families have really buried quite a lot of possibilities,” he’d said, his implants clicking and whirring as he spoke. “And we don’t have the resources to explore them ourselves, not out here. But when we rule the Empire, we will have the resources to utterly transform the existing economic paradigm.”
Colin hadn’t been sure what to make of it. Utterly destroying the Thousand Families — if it could be done without destroying the Empire as well — seemed a good thing, but who knew if the new universe would actually be better than the old. He’d said as much and Salgak had demanded to know, rather rudely, why he’d even bothered to rebel if he was scared of change. Even if the rebels won, they couldn’t change everything as long as they accepted the old order. But technology could change the entire face of humanity.
He pushed the thought aside as the missiles reached the edge of the enemy’s point defence envelope.
“Scattering now, sir,” the tactical officer said.
Penny didn’t understand what she was seeing — and that meant it had to be a trick. The enemy missiles were colossal, easily targeted by the point defence network. None of them would last long enough to attack anything, even the gunboats at the edge of Wachter’s formation. Hell, it was almost as if the enemy wanted the missiles destroyed.
“Admiral,” the tactical officer said, “the missile drives just cut out. Completely.”
Wachter swore. “Bring active sensors to full power,” he ordered. “Start sweeping space for targets.”
Penny frowned. Wachter understood… but she didn’t. The missiles might be following ballistic trajectories, yet that would just make them even easier targets. It was unlikely that the active sensors would have difficulty tracking them, while even if they did have problems the computers could still predict where the missiles would be…
And then the display suddenly spangled with red icons. Hundreds of red icons, right on top of them.
“Carrier missiles,” Wachter commented, as the point defence network hastily recalculated its firing solutions. “I’ve heard it theorized, but never actually put into practice.”
Penny understood, too late. The enemy might as well have fired a barrage at point-blank range. They were already slipping through the point defence, roaring past the smaller ships and falling on the superdreadnaughts like wolves on a lamb. General Clive went to full alert as four missiles slammed into her shields, rocking her violently; four other superdreadnaughts were less lucky. Two of them took serious damage and a third exploded into a radioactive fireball. The fourth lost her external racks to a lucky hit.
And then the tactical officer swore out loud.
“Report,” Wachter snapped. “Calmly, if possible.”
“Admiral,” the tactical officer said, “we just lost the point defence network!”
Chapter Thirty-Four
“Admiral,” the tactical officer said, “their point defence network has collapsed.”
Colin allowed himself a tight smile. The Geeks had been right; they’d told him that the network could be brought down, with the right modifications to the ECM drones. Right now, every starship orbiting Morrison had been forced to rely on its own defences, rather than fighting as part of a group. They were terrifyingly exposed to his fire.