The GQ alarm began to scream, and she charged towards her station, but it was purely automatic. Deep inside, she knew it was already far too late.
Starcoms are never emplaced on planets. They are enormous structures-not so much massive as big, full of empty space-and it would be far more expensive to build them to survive a planet's gravity, but the real reason they are always found in space is much simpler. No one wants multiple black holes, however small, generated on the surface of his world, despite everything gravity shields can do and all the failsafes in the galaxy. And so they are placed in orbit, usually at least four hundred thousand Kilometers out, which also gets them beyond the planetary Powell limit and doubles their efficiency as they fold space to permit supralight message transmission.
Unfortunately, this eminently sensible solution creates an Achilles heel for strategic command and control. Starships and planets without starcoms must rely on SLAM drones, many times faster than light but far slower than a starcom and woefully short-legged in comparison, so any raider's first priority is the destruction of his target's starcom. Without it, he has time. Time to hit his objectives, to carry out his mission … and to vanish once more before anyone outside the system even learns he was there.
Captain Homer Ortiz sat in his command chair, face taut, as his first SLAMs went out. Ortiz was cyber synth-capable and glad of it, for it gave him the con direct as Poltava went into the attack. His crisp, clear commands to the emotionless AI sent the first salvo slashing towards the starcom orbital base across two hundred thousand kilometers of space with an acceleration of fifteen thousand gravities; they struck fifty-one seconds later, traveling at a mere three percent of light-speed, but that would have been more than sufficient even without the black hole in front of each missile.
More weapons were already on their way-not SLAMs, this time, but Hauptman effect sublight missiles. Their initial acceleration was much higher, and they had barely half as far to go. The first thousand-megaton warhead detonated twenty-seven seconds after launch.
Commander Masterman had just donned her headset when she and nine thousand other people died. Then the other missiles began to strike home.
Night turned into day on the planet of Elysium as two-thirds of its orbital defenses vanished in less than two minutes. Shocked eyes cringed away from the ring of suns blazing above them, and minds refused to grasp the magnitude of the disaster. Not in four centuries had the Imperial Fleet taken such losses in return for absolutely no damage to the enemy, but never before had the Fleet been attacked by one of its own, and the carnage a cyber-synthed battle-cruiser could wreak totally unopposed was simply beyond comprehension.
The planetary governor dashed for his com in response to the first horrified warning; he arrived just as the last missile went home against the last fort in Poltava's field of fire, and his face was white as whey. The three surviving forts were rushing to battle stations, but the marauding battle-cruiser's speed soared, already above two hundred KPS, as she cut a chord across their protective ring. She cleared the planet and acquired the first of the survivors just before its own weapons came on line, and Ortiz's smile was hellish as a fresh salvo of SLAMs raced outward. The fort had nothing to stop them with, and the governor groaned as they tore it apart.
The second fortress had time for one answering salvo, hastily launched with minimal time for fire control solutions, and then it, too, was gone.
The final fort had time to get its battle screen up, yet faced the crudest dilemma of all. Its crew had SLAMs of their own … and dared not use them. Ortiz had cut his course recklessly tight, placing Poltava far closer to Elysium than they. They could reply only with beams and warheads, lest a near-miss with a SLAM strike the very world they wanted to protect, and their gunners were shaken to their core by the catastrophe overwhelming them. They did their best, yet it never mattered at all. Their first salvos were still on the way when Ortiz launched a fresh pattern of SLAMs and flipped his ship end-for-end yet again, aiming Poltava's Fasset drive directly at the doomed fort to devour its fire.
Twelve-point-five minutes and seventy-three thousand deaths after the attack began, there were no orbital forts in Elysium's skies.
"First phase successful, Commodore," Commander Rendlemann announced. Howell nodded. Gravitic detectors, unlike other sensors, were FTL, and his flagship's gravitics had tracked their Trojan Horse and the fires of its SLAMs. It was an eerie sensation to see the undamaged fortresses on the light-speed displays and know they and all their people had ceased to exist.
He shook off a chili and gave Alexsov a tight smile. The chief of staff had argued against trying to sneak in more than one ship, insisting Poltava could do the job alone and that trying to use more would risk losing the priceless element of surprise.
"Two small vessels leaving orbit, sir," Rendlemann said suddenly.
"Right on schedule," Alexsov murmured, and Howell nodded again, watching through his synth link as the two corvettes accelerated hopelessly towards their mammoth foe. No corvette had the strength to engage a battle-cruiser … but they were all Elysium had left.
The corvettes Hermes and Leander charged the rampaging battle-cruiser, sheltering behind their own Fasset drives as they closed. They were inside her, closer to the planet, but Ortiz spun Poltava to face them head-on. She decelerated towards them even as they rushed to meet her, and Hermes lunged aside, fighting to get outside the battle-cruiser and launch her SLAM drone before she was destroyed.
Ortiz let her go, concentrating on her sister. Close-range lasers and particle beams reduced the tiny warship to half-vaporized wreckage, but the range was too short for effective point defense, and both of Leander's overcharged energy torpedoes erupted against Poltava's screen. Concussion jarred her to the keel, and Ortiz winced as damage reports flickered through his headset. His exec was on it, initiating damage control procedures, but half Poltava's forward energy mounts had been wiped away, along with over thirty of her crew. Her injuries were far from critical- certainly not enough to slow her as she went after the sole survivor-but they hurt all the more after what he'd done to the forts, and they were enough to make him cautious.
The last corvette's skipper watched the battle-cruiser overhaul him while his brain sought frantically for some way to stop her. Not for a way to survive, for there was none, but for a way to protect Elysium from her.
She was coming up fast from directly astern, her drive aimed straight at him to interdict his fire. She was grav-riding on him, drawing further acceleration from the attraction of his own drive mass even as hers acted as a brake upon his ship. She had more than enough acceleration to overtake him without that, but her captain was playing a cautious end game, using his interposed drive to protect his ship until he chose to turn and engage. Perhaps overly cautious. Hermes' weapons couldn't hurt his ship much, and there were times caution became more foolhardy than recklessness-
"Sir!" His white-faced plotting officer's voice was tight, over-controlled as he fought his own fear, but not so tight as to hide its disbelief! "Data base knows that ship!"
"What?" The captain twisted around in his command chair.
"Yes, sir. That's HMS Poltava, Skipper!"
The captain swallowed a disbelieving curse. It couldn't be true! It had to be some kind of ECM-there was no way a Fleet battle-cruiser could be doing this to her own people! But-
"Prep and update the drone!" he snapped.