"Um, isn't that just a tiny bit extreme for a reconissance mission?" Kheran said slowly, surveying the huge fleet sent by Somtaaw Command. The orders had specified a detachment from the Third Higarran Defence Fleet, which was a jointly run force of warships from all the spacefaring kiithid. What they hadn't said anything about was almost every Somtaaw ship in said fleet, some 15 percent of its total strength, being sent along.
"Two Dreadnoughts, five Deacon-class destroyers, thirty-odd frigates... bloody hell, ALL SIX of the new Oracle-class cruisers!" The Oracle was the latest idea to come out of the Faal-Corum's outstanding ship design section. It resembled, in the words of one observer, 'a Turanic Ion Array Frigate on speed.' It borrowed the magnetic web arrays from the Assassin frigate, using them to boost the power of either a fixed-forward heavy ion cannon or six turrets mounted along the hull, basically similar to those of a Dervish. Two large swarmer drone bays had also been fitted along each side, holding 24 drones between them, and a small plasma turret was perched precariously atop each of the four mag-arrays. A variant replaced the ion turrets with standard heavy guns, and the forward ion cannon with a scaled-down Siege Cannon- the mag-arrays boosted the blast's range considerably. Two of this variant had been built so far, along with four standard types, and for some bizarre reason the whole shebang had been assigned to the Kuun-Lan.
The Oracle was the only totally new ship designed by Somtaaw since the Battle of Nomad Moon, though there had been several near-total redesigns. The Hive Frigate had become the basis of a new repair craft, with PDA systems replacing the forward guns and the swarmer complement reconfigured as repair drones. There hadn't been a firm decision on a class name yet, but in an irreverent swipe at the tradition of religious designations it had been christened the 'Faith Healer' class by some anonymous wit, and this seemed likely to stick.
The Ramming Frigate had also been somewhat enhanced beyond its role as a heavy tug/impromtu self-propelled battering ram. Six small turrets had been fitted at various points, and four docking stations for Acolytes allowed it to be used as a ferry craft. It made for an excellent resource-gathering mission escort, and still worked fine for shifting asteroids around.
The Kuun-Lan herself had recieved significant upgrades to turn her into a proper ship of the line. A seventh turret had been added beneath the Worker docking pads, covering the delicate external construction gear; more than one strikecraft had sat under there and blasted away with impunity until being forcibly evicted by Somtaaw fighters. The most impressive modification was a row of six twin plasma bomb turrets on each side, mounted on the long spar between the engines and bridge. Their field of fire was very limited, but a single broadside could cripple a frigate.
Additionally, all capital ships were now fitted with the results of a collaboration between kiith Sjet and the Taiidani Republic's military research division; point defence turrets. They were a much smaller version of the turret on the Dirvaas Multi-gun corvette, configured for shooting down missiles, mines and other small targets. They weren't especially effective against fighters, but carriers, Chieftan resource controllers and the two Explorer motherships had had their main armament recently refitted in an 'ack-ack' configuration to give a better rate of fire at the expense of damage per blast. Something similar had been done to all strikecraft guns, finally making them as useful for dogfighting as the old mass drivers had been. The Kuun-Lan maintained six fighter squadrons; four of Acolytes, one of Seekers and one of the extremely secret Bentusi ion fighters. The latter didn't get used often, as it had turned out that the ship that had handed the schematics over had done so on its own initiative without consulting the rest of the Unbound. To replace the Acolyte with such craft or even use them except in time of war or emergency would therefore have led to awkward questions, which Somtaaw's kiith-sa decided that he could do without. They also kept three Sentinel squadrons and four Workers aboard.
Kheran saw very little prospect of needing any of this stuff on this particular mission, and was decidedly confused. "Politics again," was Maala's verdict. "Somebody's showing off."
"Yeah, guess so. They've certainly kept it quiet in the media; didn't want to get everybody's hopes up in case..." Kheran tailed off awkwardly. "Sorry."
"Don't be. I've had more than thirty years to get over it. I know what the chances of anybody surviving are as well as anybody; I saw the surface of Kharak for myself." She straightened. "We'd better head for the slipgate."
Kheran tried hard not to look as uncomfortable as he felt; he'd heard plenty of stories about slipgates, and like many pilots he posessed a superstitious streak.
It was a thirty minute hyperspace jump, taking them into the Faal-te dark matter cluster, a region of space that was legendary for weird stories. Fleets had allegedly disappeared in this region, only to emerge hundreds of years later- or earlier, in one or two cases. Weirdly enough, these latter had been said to occur at around the same time as some remarkable advances in shiptech by the Taiidan. Kheran wasn't entirely certain what to make of that, but he still didn't entirely trust slipgates. Nobody really understood how they worked, and no amount of scans by probes traversing them had yielded any conclusive information about the physics involved. It was known that there was a time dilation effect -transit usually took about eight minutes, but as far as the rest of the universe was concerned you were only in there for a millisecond- so such legends were scientifically plausible.
Kheran regarded the slipgate through the bridge viewport with an air of deep suspicion. "I hate these things," he muttered to himself. Maala nodded in sympathy. "They give me the creeps too, sir. Beats taking the long way around, though."
"Yeah, s'pose so. Helm, take us in."
"Aye sir. Zero two three, five degree down angle and slow ahead."
Slowly, the Kuun-Lan entered the slipgate.
The big ship exited it in a blaze of light, to find the fleet already there. "Huh? That's weird..." Kheran said, then tailed off as he glanced at the time/date readout. It read ERROR.
"What's gone wrong with the clock?"
"Conn, nav. Something's wrong, sir. My charts are off. Galactic drift factors are out of sync, I, I..."
"Check archives and future projections, as far as we have both ways. Find out just what the hell that slipgate's done!" Maala snapped. Kheran was already at the communications station, where the duty officer trying to get a phased telemetry line through the slipgate to Hiigara to get a mission update. He turned to his Tactical Officer and shrugged helplessly.
"Well, looks like we're ahead of schedule," he said with a faint and slightly bitter smile. "So much for a gentle learning curve, then. Did I do anything to deserve this on my first day?"
"Sajuuk..." the navigator breathed. "Skipper, you need to see this!" Maala shot him a look for his informality, but the navigator was Kheran's age and had got drunk with him at least twice, so she figured that it was scarcely a court-martial offence.
"So," Kheran said cheerfully, "how far ahead of schedule are we?"
"Well, I can't be a hundred percent accurate, but I don't think the Mothership has even left the Scaffold yet."
"Oh." Kheran blinked a couple of times. "Bloody hell," he concluded. "We can... we're probably SUPPOSED to...!"
"Conn, signals. Afras-sa is on the line. Audio-only at this range."
"Put him on the main speaker," Kheran ordered. "And I'll bet he knew all about this. Kuun-Lan recieving, sir."
"I assume you've realised that something's up," Afras replied. "From where you're sitting the Mothership leaves the Scaffold in three weeks. Your revised orders are as follows. You are to render any and all assistance to the defence of Kharak, the Mothership's voyage and the overthrow of the Taiidani Imperium, except supplying any of your weapons or shiptech; the Galactic Council is going to go crazy as it is."
"I'd guessed that much," Kheran replied. "And you didn't mention any of this beforehand because...?"
"...you would have thought I'd gone mad," Afras said, sounding amused. "Now go bring 'em home, kid. Bring 'em ALL home." The call ended.
"O-kay. Let's start changing history!" Kheran said authoritatively. "Signals, have the senior COs from the fleet come aboard for a planning conference. I want every good tactical thinker we've got working on this. Maala, you and I are going to start working on some scenarios. There's three hundred million people depending on us to get this right. Mr Davin, you have the bridge!"
There followed a two-hour planning session, during which they roughed out a basic plan. "If they pull in absolutely everything they have in this sector, things should be roughly equal in a straight fight," a veteran Dervish skipper in charge of a small frigate group concluded. "If they approach in a tight attack formation so that they can concentrate firepower they could do a fair bit of damage." Kheran nodded thoughtfully.
"That's standard doctrine for the Imperial fleet," he agreed. "Our ships will have an edge both in forward speed and turret coverage. If they can dodge or weather the initial volley then they'll be able to score some pretty serious hits. Trouble is, the ion cannons on a Kwaar-Jet cruiser'll put quite a dent in a Dreadnought. How a smaller ship would fare I hate to think. If we could mess their formation up a bit we'd go through them like a mass driver round through a teabag!"
"That's one way of putting it," one of the Oracle commanders said with a barely suppressed chuckle. "Hmm. Before they came up against the repulse weapon the Republic have started fitting to their cruisers, standard Imperial assault tactics had them advancing all in one big group, close together so the could mass their fire better. A seige cannon burst or three would bugger that up nicely."
"Good thinking," Maala replied. "Now, what about fighters?"
"I reckon they're best left to their own devices and told to concentrate on enemy strikecraft. We can call in missile strikes at about subgroup strength [four ships, one third of a typical squadron] as and when we need them. Most squadron leaders can prioritise targets better than a combat controller any day," Kheran said. "Ask any Acolyte pilot." He refrained from brushing imaginary dust from his Distinguished Piloting Citation ribbon, but he had never made a secret of his opinion that nobody knows how to use fighters better than somebody who'd flown in combat for themselves. And he ought to know.
"Sounds sensible," was Maala's verdict. "In an engagement like this the big boys are best left to themselves." Kheran wasn't sure what to make of this one, but he knew from bitter experience that when Command needed you to help take out a capital ship above about destroyer size then things were seriously 'fubar.'
"Right, that's Kharak more or less planned out- we can work out the little details with the local defence forces once we get there. How about the Kaar-Suuliem?" put in a destroyer captain whose father had been lost aboard that ship. "I know Kharak's a priority, but..."
"Nobody gets left out; Afras-sa said get 'em all home, and by Sajuuk that's what we're going to do. I'll detach three ramming frigates and a fighter squadron," Kheran replied. "That should be enough to make even a Chieftan-class carrier think twice. 57th Squadron perhaps?" The 57th Somtaaw Attack Squadron, aka the Renegades, had the best anti-pirate record in the kiith. They were also Kheran's old outfit.
"Is that such a good idea, sir?" said the Kuun-Lan's new fighter wing OC, unusually hailing from the ship's sole Seeker reconissance fighter squadron. "Their squad leader's only been in command for a couple of days."
"I'd noticed," Kheran replied, getting a general laugh. "No, Deke'll do just fine. Besides, I'd been CO for about as long when I took on the Naggarok, and I did okay. Compared to that, a bunch of Turanic Raiders are nothing.
"Okay, that's everything. We move out as soon as the 57th are paired with the frigates." They saluted as one, and filed out. Only Maala remained. "Not bad for a rookie, Kheran." She'd readily agreed to dropping rank in private. "I remember your uncle back when he was first in charge of this old girl." She patted the bulkhead affectionately, clearing up her nominal commander's confusion about who she was referring to. "He was strutting around like he knew it all, and it took him three months and five pirate attacks to learn different. He said he was moving up the one person he trusted not to do the same thing."
"Yeah, he said that to me," Kheran said. "Although he also said you didn't want to be the one who gets blamed if everything goes tits-up because you missed something."
"When was the last time THAT happened?" she retorted in mock-irritation. "Come on, we'd better get back to the bridge before Davin plots a hyperspace course straight into the middle of a star or something."
"Do you trust ANYBODY to look after this old boat when you aren't on the bridge? Uncle Afras is right, you really have focused all your maternal instincts on the Kuun-Lan!" Laughing and shaking his head, Kheran went to reclaim the Big Chair.
"Two Dreadnoughts, five Deacon-class destroyers, thirty-odd frigates... bloody hell, ALL SIX of the new Oracle-class cruisers!" The Oracle was the latest idea to come out of the Faal-Corum's outstanding ship design section. It resembled, in the words of one observer, 'a Turanic Ion Array Frigate on speed.' It borrowed the magnetic web arrays from the Assassin frigate, using them to boost the power of either a fixed-forward heavy ion cannon or six turrets mounted along the hull, basically similar to those of a Dervish. Two large swarmer drone bays had also been fitted along each side, holding 24 drones between them, and a small plasma turret was perched precariously atop each of the four mag-arrays. A variant replaced the ion turrets with standard heavy guns, and the forward ion cannon with a scaled-down Siege Cannon- the mag-arrays boosted the blast's range considerably. Two of this variant had been built so far, along with four standard types, and for some bizarre reason the whole shebang had been assigned to the Kuun-Lan.
The Oracle was the only totally new ship designed by Somtaaw since the Battle of Nomad Moon, though there had been several near-total redesigns. The Hive Frigate had become the basis of a new repair craft, with PDA systems replacing the forward guns and the swarmer complement reconfigured as repair drones. There hadn't been a firm decision on a class name yet, but in an irreverent swipe at the tradition of religious designations it had been christened the 'Faith Healer' class by some anonymous wit, and this seemed likely to stick.
The Ramming Frigate had also been somewhat enhanced beyond its role as a heavy tug/impromtu self-propelled battering ram. Six small turrets had been fitted at various points, and four docking stations for Acolytes allowed it to be used as a ferry craft. It made for an excellent resource-gathering mission escort, and still worked fine for shifting asteroids around.
The Kuun-Lan herself had recieved significant upgrades to turn her into a proper ship of the line. A seventh turret had been added beneath the Worker docking pads, covering the delicate external construction gear; more than one strikecraft had sat under there and blasted away with impunity until being forcibly evicted by Somtaaw fighters. The most impressive modification was a row of six twin plasma bomb turrets on each side, mounted on the long spar between the engines and bridge. Their field of fire was very limited, but a single broadside could cripple a frigate.
Additionally, all capital ships were now fitted with the results of a collaboration between kiith Sjet and the Taiidani Republic's military research division; point defence turrets. They were a much smaller version of the turret on the Dirvaas Multi-gun corvette, configured for shooting down missiles, mines and other small targets. They weren't especially effective against fighters, but carriers, Chieftan resource controllers and the two Explorer motherships had had their main armament recently refitted in an 'ack-ack' configuration to give a better rate of fire at the expense of damage per blast. Something similar had been done to all strikecraft guns, finally making them as useful for dogfighting as the old mass drivers had been. The Kuun-Lan maintained six fighter squadrons; four of Acolytes, one of Seekers and one of the extremely secret Bentusi ion fighters. The latter didn't get used often, as it had turned out that the ship that had handed the schematics over had done so on its own initiative without consulting the rest of the Unbound. To replace the Acolyte with such craft or even use them except in time of war or emergency would therefore have led to awkward questions, which Somtaaw's kiith-sa decided that he could do without. They also kept three Sentinel squadrons and four Workers aboard.
Kheran saw very little prospect of needing any of this stuff on this particular mission, and was decidedly confused. "Politics again," was Maala's verdict. "Somebody's showing off."
"Yeah, guess so. They've certainly kept it quiet in the media; didn't want to get everybody's hopes up in case..." Kheran tailed off awkwardly. "Sorry."
"Don't be. I've had more than thirty years to get over it. I know what the chances of anybody surviving are as well as anybody; I saw the surface of Kharak for myself." She straightened. "We'd better head for the slipgate."
Kheran tried hard not to look as uncomfortable as he felt; he'd heard plenty of stories about slipgates, and like many pilots he posessed a superstitious streak.
It was a thirty minute hyperspace jump, taking them into the Faal-te dark matter cluster, a region of space that was legendary for weird stories. Fleets had allegedly disappeared in this region, only to emerge hundreds of years later- or earlier, in one or two cases. Weirdly enough, these latter had been said to occur at around the same time as some remarkable advances in shiptech by the Taiidan. Kheran wasn't entirely certain what to make of that, but he still didn't entirely trust slipgates. Nobody really understood how they worked, and no amount of scans by probes traversing them had yielded any conclusive information about the physics involved. It was known that there was a time dilation effect -transit usually took about eight minutes, but as far as the rest of the universe was concerned you were only in there for a millisecond- so such legends were scientifically plausible.
Kheran regarded the slipgate through the bridge viewport with an air of deep suspicion. "I hate these things," he muttered to himself. Maala nodded in sympathy. "They give me the creeps too, sir. Beats taking the long way around, though."
"Yeah, s'pose so. Helm, take us in."
"Aye sir. Zero two three, five degree down angle and slow ahead."
Slowly, the Kuun-Lan entered the slipgate.
The big ship exited it in a blaze of light, to find the fleet already there. "Huh? That's weird..." Kheran said, then tailed off as he glanced at the time/date readout. It read ERROR.
"What's gone wrong with the clock?"
"Conn, nav. Something's wrong, sir. My charts are off. Galactic drift factors are out of sync, I, I..."
"Check archives and future projections, as far as we have both ways. Find out just what the hell that slipgate's done!" Maala snapped. Kheran was already at the communications station, where the duty officer trying to get a phased telemetry line through the slipgate to Hiigara to get a mission update. He turned to his Tactical Officer and shrugged helplessly.
"Well, looks like we're ahead of schedule," he said with a faint and slightly bitter smile. "So much for a gentle learning curve, then. Did I do anything to deserve this on my first day?"
"Sajuuk..." the navigator breathed. "Skipper, you need to see this!" Maala shot him a look for his informality, but the navigator was Kheran's age and had got drunk with him at least twice, so she figured that it was scarcely a court-martial offence.
"So," Kheran said cheerfully, "how far ahead of schedule are we?"
"Well, I can't be a hundred percent accurate, but I don't think the Mothership has even left the Scaffold yet."
"Oh." Kheran blinked a couple of times. "Bloody hell," he concluded. "We can... we're probably SUPPOSED to...!"
"Conn, signals. Afras-sa is on the line. Audio-only at this range."
"Put him on the main speaker," Kheran ordered. "And I'll bet he knew all about this. Kuun-Lan recieving, sir."
"I assume you've realised that something's up," Afras replied. "From where you're sitting the Mothership leaves the Scaffold in three weeks. Your revised orders are as follows. You are to render any and all assistance to the defence of Kharak, the Mothership's voyage and the overthrow of the Taiidani Imperium, except supplying any of your weapons or shiptech; the Galactic Council is going to go crazy as it is."
"I'd guessed that much," Kheran replied. "And you didn't mention any of this beforehand because...?"
"...you would have thought I'd gone mad," Afras said, sounding amused. "Now go bring 'em home, kid. Bring 'em ALL home." The call ended.
"O-kay. Let's start changing history!" Kheran said authoritatively. "Signals, have the senior COs from the fleet come aboard for a planning conference. I want every good tactical thinker we've got working on this. Maala, you and I are going to start working on some scenarios. There's three hundred million people depending on us to get this right. Mr Davin, you have the bridge!"
There followed a two-hour planning session, during which they roughed out a basic plan. "If they pull in absolutely everything they have in this sector, things should be roughly equal in a straight fight," a veteran Dervish skipper in charge of a small frigate group concluded. "If they approach in a tight attack formation so that they can concentrate firepower they could do a fair bit of damage." Kheran nodded thoughtfully.
"That's standard doctrine for the Imperial fleet," he agreed. "Our ships will have an edge both in forward speed and turret coverage. If they can dodge or weather the initial volley then they'll be able to score some pretty serious hits. Trouble is, the ion cannons on a Kwaar-Jet cruiser'll put quite a dent in a Dreadnought. How a smaller ship would fare I hate to think. If we could mess their formation up a bit we'd go through them like a mass driver round through a teabag!"
"That's one way of putting it," one of the Oracle commanders said with a barely suppressed chuckle. "Hmm. Before they came up against the repulse weapon the Republic have started fitting to their cruisers, standard Imperial assault tactics had them advancing all in one big group, close together so the could mass their fire better. A seige cannon burst or three would bugger that up nicely."
"Good thinking," Maala replied. "Now, what about fighters?"
"I reckon they're best left to their own devices and told to concentrate on enemy strikecraft. We can call in missile strikes at about subgroup strength [four ships, one third of a typical squadron] as and when we need them. Most squadron leaders can prioritise targets better than a combat controller any day," Kheran said. "Ask any Acolyte pilot." He refrained from brushing imaginary dust from his Distinguished Piloting Citation ribbon, but he had never made a secret of his opinion that nobody knows how to use fighters better than somebody who'd flown in combat for themselves. And he ought to know.
"Sounds sensible," was Maala's verdict. "In an engagement like this the big boys are best left to themselves." Kheran wasn't sure what to make of this one, but he knew from bitter experience that when Command needed you to help take out a capital ship above about destroyer size then things were seriously 'fubar.'
"Right, that's Kharak more or less planned out- we can work out the little details with the local defence forces once we get there. How about the Kaar-Suuliem?" put in a destroyer captain whose father had been lost aboard that ship. "I know Kharak's a priority, but..."
"Nobody gets left out; Afras-sa said get 'em all home, and by Sajuuk that's what we're going to do. I'll detach three ramming frigates and a fighter squadron," Kheran replied. "That should be enough to make even a Chieftan-class carrier think twice. 57th Squadron perhaps?" The 57th Somtaaw Attack Squadron, aka the Renegades, had the best anti-pirate record in the kiith. They were also Kheran's old outfit.
"Is that such a good idea, sir?" said the Kuun-Lan's new fighter wing OC, unusually hailing from the ship's sole Seeker reconissance fighter squadron. "Their squad leader's only been in command for a couple of days."
"I'd noticed," Kheran replied, getting a general laugh. "No, Deke'll do just fine. Besides, I'd been CO for about as long when I took on the Naggarok, and I did okay. Compared to that, a bunch of Turanic Raiders are nothing.
"Okay, that's everything. We move out as soon as the 57th are paired with the frigates." They saluted as one, and filed out. Only Maala remained. "Not bad for a rookie, Kheran." She'd readily agreed to dropping rank in private. "I remember your uncle back when he was first in charge of this old girl." She patted the bulkhead affectionately, clearing up her nominal commander's confusion about who she was referring to. "He was strutting around like he knew it all, and it took him three months and five pirate attacks to learn different. He said he was moving up the one person he trusted not to do the same thing."
"Yeah, he said that to me," Kheran said. "Although he also said you didn't want to be the one who gets blamed if everything goes tits-up because you missed something."
"When was the last time THAT happened?" she retorted in mock-irritation. "Come on, we'd better get back to the bridge before Davin plots a hyperspace course straight into the middle of a star or something."
"Do you trust ANYBODY to look after this old boat when you aren't on the bridge? Uncle Afras is right, you really have focused all your maternal instincts on the Kuun-Lan!" Laughing and shaking his head, Kheran went to reclaim the Big Chair.