Brown was more concerned with the enemy’s ground capabilities. He had no data at all about any planetside fighting, but his mind had filled in the blanks. He’d been working his troops hard…too hard, perhaps. But he had no idea what they would have to face, and he was sure they needed to be at 110%.
“Back in line. We’re going to do this all night until you get it right.” Brown’s amplified voice ripped through the air, and the 1 st Regiment of the Adelaide Militia scrambled back into position in the deepening twilight.
“We’re getting intel from the warp gate scanners, sir.” Lieutenant Khan didn’t take her eyes from the display as she reported. “We have ships inbound.”
Captain Riley Calloway sat in his command chair rigid as a marble statue despite his repeated efforts to remain calm. Calloway knew his small squadron was a forlorn hope with little chance of survival. Admiral Garret hadn’t had a choice when he’d ordered them here; Calloway knew that. The admiral had sent him a personal note, and he pulled no punches in it, either about what was at stake or their chances of coming back. Augustus Garret did not send his men and women to their deaths lightly, and Calloway wasn’t about to let the admiral down. His ships would fight like hell, but their chances of victory or escape were nil. He knew that, and so did his crews. But he’d be damned if they were going to die for nothing. They had to get data back to the high command…much better data than they’d been getting up to now.
“Ensign Carp, run a diagnostic. Confirm that the sensor array is working properly.” Calloway’s squadron had been in the system for almost three weeks, and he’d used the time to set up a network of small scanners at each warp gate. He was determined to collect solid data no matter what. Carp sat behind and to the left of the captain’s command chair. Calloway turned to look back, but his view of the ensign was partially blocked by a large plasti-steel conduit. The bridge of a fast attack ship was anything but roomy or comfortable.
“Yes, sir.” Carp was a young officer, barely a year out of the Academy, but his answers were sharp and crisp. “Stand by for results.”
Calloway couldn’t help but wonder what kind of career Carp might have had ahead of him. He was an excellent young officer who showed every sign of developing into an outstanding leader one day. But fate had put him in the 18 th Squadron and the 18 th Squadron in the path of a terrible new enemy. Ronald Carp didn’t have much chance of surviving to take a crack at that future. He was young and smart, but he was probably going to die in this system in the next few days. Calloway sighed quietly. Such waste.
“Captain, all scanners check out fully.” Carp looked up from his display, his head tilted so he could see Calloway under the conduit. “The scanner array is up and operating, capturing all data.” Of course, the warp gate was 243 light minutes from the squadron’s position in Adelaide orbit, so the data they were receiving was more than four hours old.
The squadron had deployed a hundred tiny scanning devices at each warp gate. Calloway didn’t doubt the enemy would be able to locate and destroy them all, but not before they sent back considerable information…data that could be crucial when the fleet was ready mount a serious defense against the invaders.
“Ensign Carp, I want you to monitor our communications. All incoming data is to be retransmitted to the Commnet station immediately.”
“Yes, sir.” Carp was moving his hands over his screen as he responded. “I’m sending transmissions every thirty seconds, sir.” Carp paused slightly then continued. “Commnet is sending drones on twenty minutes intervals, captain.” Another brief pause. “Any faster and the station will run out.”
“Very well.” Calloway scowled, thinking quietly to himself. Damn, you always overlook something. He’d have preferred drone launches every five minutes to mitigate the damage when the enemy managed to knock out the station. He hated to think of losing 18 or 19 minutes of priceless data his crews had paid for with their lives. He realized they’d had neither the time nor the cargo space to bring extra Commnet drones, but it was frustrating all the same.
“Lieutenant Khan, I want ongoing reports.” He had a better look over to Kahn’s workstation, at least one without any major obstructions. You got used to the cramped quarters on an attack ship…eventually. “Anything at all of note.”
“Yes, sir.” Khan was a bit older than Carp, old enough to have seen combat in the closing phases of the war and then later when Admiral Garret hunted down Gavin Stark’s rogue ships. Calloway had high hopes for Carp, but the young ensign hadn’t seen battle yet. Intelligence, courage, ability…they were all important, but there was no substitute for combat experience. No training, no lectures, no emphatic warnings could truly prepare a recruit for the realities of battle. Khan had seen those realities, and she’d come through it with distinction.
“We’re getting transit reports, sir.” Khan’s eyes were glued to her screen as she spoke. “Looks like seven ships, sir.” She paused slightly as she waited for the data to cross her display. “Yes, sir. Seven vessels. They all appear to be the same or similar class, approximately cruiser size, estimated at 40,000-50,000 tons.”
“Very well, Lieutenant Khan. Carry on.” Calloway leaned back in his seat. “Ensign Carp, order Stingray and Hornet to commence silent running protocols.” The term was obsolete, a bit of a carryover from wet navy days. In space it didn’t refer literally to noise; it meant no non-critical use of energy. “Use line-of-site laser communication only.
“Yes, sir. Laser communication only.”
“Place Raptor on silent running as well.” Calloway instinctively reached for the seat belt on the command chair. Silent running meant no unnecessary energy emissions…and that meant the loss of even the modest gravity-equivalent generated by the ship’s drives. Capital ships could produce near Earth-normal gravity, or at least a reasonable facsimile, but the small attack vessels were lucky to generate one-third of that. On silent running they would lose even that - the ship would be a near zero g environment.
Calloway knew his tiny squadron didn’t have a chance in a fight, but the longer a ship remained undetected, the more data it could collect and ultimately transmit. Perhaps, though it seemed a remote possibility to him, one of his ships might even manage to remain hidden and actually survive. If that happened, it wouldn’t be Raptor…he’d placed his ship on point to get the maximum possible amount of scanning data as the enemy approached. Stingray was positioned behind the planet relative to the enemy’s most likely axis of approach, and Hornet was hidden behind Adelaide’s distant moon, over 600,000 kilometers out. Raptor was situated to allow direct line communication with each of the other ships.
Long-range scanners worked primarily by detecting energy emissions. A small ship like Raptor was difficult to target at any range when running silent. Calloway knew his ship would be all but invisible to scanners similar to his own at any range greater than 1,000,000 kilometers. Of course, he had no idea what kind of capabilities these enemy vessels had.
His ships’ own ability to detect the invaders was highly dependent on the energy output of those vessels. His warp gate sensors were giving him great info now, positioned as they were in the immediate area of the transiting ships. In a Rim system like this there were typically only a few scanners deployed, while the warp gates leading to a major planet like Columbia were blanketed with detection devices designed to give extensive information on any invading fleet. But Calloway’s squadron had laced the entry points into the system with clouds of portable scanner buoys; his people would have known if a mosquito had tried to fly through the warp gate.