“I’m now picking up sensor sweeps from satellites in Heinlein’s orbit,” Anna said. “I think they’re armed platforms and perhaps gunships. The Admiral is clearing us to engage anything hostile, but anything non-hostile is to be left strictly alone.”
“The Admiral wants the satellite network intact,” the Captain growled. “It’s probably rigged to transmit information to insurgents on the ground…and he wants it intact to save money.”
I would have liked to disagree with him, but how could it? The massive sphere of Heinlein on the display was blinking up more and more red icons, including some on the ground that appeared to be planetary defence centres fully equal to some of the fortresses the UN had built on Earth, back when it seemed that war with the colonies was likely. If they were anything like the ones on Earth, they would have been formidable threats at one time, but considerably less useful against an active drive field. That suggested that Heinlein had probably updated the systems to confront us.
“Anna, mark the location of the ground-based stations and mark them for later attention,” the Captain ordered. “Kitty, pass the data on to the Admiral and request permission to engage.”
“Yes, sir,” Kitty said. “The Admiral is responding; the fleet is preparing to force its way into orbit…”
“Yes,” Anna said, in delight. “We got one!”
A dull cheer ran through the bridge. One of the Heinlein starships had miscalculated finally and emerged far too close to another UN starship, which had opened fire at once without waiting for instructions. Before the Heinlein starship could wormhole out again, it had been bracketed and rapidly blown apart into an expanding cloud of plasma. I felt the exultation as well, even shared it completely. It was harder to remember that the Heinlein starships were only defending their health and home when they were trying to kill me, and Kitty, and the remainder of the crew.
“Signal the skipper with my congratulations,” the Captain ordered, a thin smile crossing his face. “If we can take out the other four ships, this will be much easier.”
“Captain, freighters and other starships are departing the planet’s orbit,” Kitty said. “The Admiral is detaching cruisers to halt them until they can be searched.”
Captain Shalenko muttered another curse under his breath. “They’re traps,” he predicted, grimly. “They could have left at any time, so why do they wait until we’re right on top of them?”
He keyed his console and opened a direct link to the Admiral. I only heard his side of the conversation, but from his face, the Admiral wasn’t proving receptive to his advice. I hoped that his career wouldn’t suffer because of it, although if that Kitty said was true, Captain Shalenko was someone else who had obtained his position through connections. The Admiral might find it hard to discipline him.
“John, stand by to take the point defence,” Anna said, suddenly. The skies above Heinlein were coming to life as the defences rumbled into operation. Several of them had been so well-stealthed that we hadn’t even realised they were there until they brought up their active sensors. “I’ll have to handle the planet-side operations myself.”
The console came to life in front of me and I checked it rapidly. We’d fired hundreds of laser pulses in the last hour and had actually drained the laser capacitors quite badly. Anna had solved the problem by linking the laser banks to the main fusion plant, but that was draining power from other parts of the ship. The reporters, I realised suddenly, might be in darkness. It probably wouldn’t matter. As much as I despised them, they would at least be alive to complain. The experience might even do them good.
I ran through the systems as the planet’s defences opened fire. Some of them were standard missiles that had been left in orbit only to be triggered when the orders came, others were much nastier, including a missile that split apart into several other missiles just before it entered laser range. I couldn’t hope to handle it myself; I could just set priorities and allow the computers to handle the rest of it. If they failed to take out a missile in time, the Devastator might be destroyed along with the remainder of the fleet.
“The Admiral is recalling the cruisers,” Kitty said. “Captain…”
She broke off. Where the cruiser Michael Galloway had been, there was now nothing, but an expanding cloud of debris. The cruiser had been closing to intercept one of the escaping freighters and the Captain on the freighter had suddenly tripped the self-destruct system. They had to have loaded a dozen nukes onto the freighter to get that effect, I realised suddenly; the cruiser hadn’t stood a chance.
“They should have stood off and fired into the drive if necessary,” the Captain grated, angrily. I shared his frustration. “Anna, take down the planetary defence systems on the ground, now!”
The planet was firing on us itself. They’d installed massive laser cannons, each one far more powerful than anything we could mount on a starship, trusting them to sweep space clear of invading starships. How had they done it so fast? I found myself wondering. How could they have prepared all this in a mere two months? Anna fired back, launching Kinetic Energy Weapons down towards the ground-based defences, only to see some of her KEWs burned out of space by the lasers. The remainder of the fleet was clearing local space of orbiting defences, but as long as the ground-based systems remained intact, we couldn’t hope to support infantrymen on the ground.
“Got one,” Anna said. A red icon vanished from the display. I didn’t want to think about what that meant on the ground. The installation would have been devastated, but what about the surrounding countryside? Had the Heinlein defenders installed their weapons well away from the civilian population, or had they emplaced them right in the midst of their towns and cities? The death toll might be horrendous already. It would only get worse when the troops started to land. If half the rumours and stories I’d heard about Heinlein were true, it was going to be a nightmare. “We’re clearing the way forward.”
I nodded to myself. The Devastator was designed for bombarding the surface of a planet. No matter what the defenders did, they couldn’t prevent Anna from unloading hundreds of KEWs onto the surface, devastating defence installations and government centres. Their starships, which seemed to have retreated, should have targeted us first. They might have crippled the entire invasion…
No, I realised. Admiral Hoover would have pushed on regardless. I had the feeling that nothing short of death would deter him from his mission, even if it cost him the entire fleet. Failure would be punished at home; success, even costly success, would be feted. The cruisers and the battleship could bombard the planet if they had to, even if they didn’t carry the same weapons as the Devastator. They could still take the planet. They would still take the planet.
And orbital space was clear.
“The Admiral is signalling to the fleet,” Kitty said. There was something in her voice that brought me up cold. “Land the landing force!”
Chapter Fifteen
The UN possesses what it regards as the perfect ground combat doctrine. Put simply, it involves seizing control of the utilities (power, food, water, etc) and then using it to control and coerce the enemy population. The doctrine was designed, however, for worlds where the enemy were barely equipped and often unarmed. It couldn’t fit a world where the enemy was often better armed than the UN’s forces. This should not have been a surprise. When the UN invaded Heinlein, there was little in either side’s arsenal that would have been unfamiliar to an officer from an earlier, pre-space age.