At the Worm Hole Entrance
“Incoming missiles!” the Sensors Officer said. Not quite a shout, but hardly his normal voice, either. “The Dominion blocking force has fired on us!” The H.M.S. Lionheart was in the middle of the Victorian formation, where it could both monitor the course of the upcoming battle and quickly go to the assistance of any Victorian ship that needed it.
“A full report would be appreciated, Chief Kunnin. Tell me how many and when they arrive,” Captain Eder said calmly.
“Yes, sir,” the Chief said sheepishly. “Uh, Mildred counts four hundred and fifty missiles, ETA in fifteen minutes.”
“That’s better, thank you. All frigates and destroyers, deploy anti-missile drones. Prepare to engage any leakers. All ships, go active with computer controlled anti-missile fire in ten minutes.”
“Sensors show large number of enemy ships accelerating towards us, Captain,” the Sensors Officer said, his voice tightly controlled. “Sixty plus ships.”
“Target locks, Chief?” Eder asked.
“Not yet, Captain. There is a lot of jamming, probably some jammers mixed in with the incoming missiles. No firm locks yet.”
“Send some recon birds out,” Eder ordered. “I want to cut through all this crap and see what we’re up against.” Something seemed wrong, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
The screening frigates fired reconnaissance drones toward the oncoming Dominion force and reports began to filter back. The Dominion forces had assumed a wide crescent shape, with a concentration of ships in the center, and in the very center, a positively huge ship. The recon drones reported that most of the ships were cruiser strength, with three battleships and whatever the hell the big ship was. Interspersed among the war ships were numerous small vessels.
“Jeez,” someone breathed. “There’s a lot of them.”
“Too many,” said the Sensors Chief. “Coldstream Guards only counted sixty seven. We’re getting readings for well over a hundred, so there are a lot of decoys out there.”
Even if there were only sixty ships or so, four hundred and fifty missiles was not a very heavy barrage, Eder mused. He wouldn’t have been surprised if there had been over a thousand. Or more. Why such a light volley? “Can you get a firm lock on them, enough to get a clear ID?” he asked.
“Not yet, sir. Recon drones are still working their way in.”
But as they watched, the Dominion blocking force saturated the area with its anti-missile defense and one by one, the recon drones fell before they could burn through the jamming and the decoys and get a clear picture of what the Dominions had.
“Not very anxious for us to see what they’ve got, are they?” Eder mused.
In the meantime, the four hundred and fifty Dominion missiles reached the outer range of the anti-missile drones, which fired small, fast rockets and guided them close enough to the enemy missiles so that the weak onboard sensors could lock on. There were a series of explosions, and then there were only four hundred and twenty missiles.
The anti-missile drones fired a second volley of the mini-missiles. More explosions, but then the Dominion missiles flashed past them and continued toward the Victorian ships, getting closer.
The second line of Victorian drones fired, and so the dance continued until the Dominion missiles reached reliable laser range and the frigates opened up. Thirty of the missiles locked onto two of the frigates and bore in on them. Captain Eder had kept the cruisers and his precious battleship just far enough behind the frigates so that they could not readily help them, and now one of the frigates paid for this tactic with its life. It turned sharply, and then used a full Hong Brake to sharply decelerate, hoping to break the missiles’ lock. Six did lose their lock on the hapless ship and began a long, curving turn, hoping to acquire a new target. But the remaining nine stubbornly closed in. Bofor guns took out two more while they were still fifty miles out and a lucky laser shot caught another, but the last six reached their target, exploding within five hundred yards of the frigate and hurtling shrapnel through the frigate’s hull and into the corridors and work spaces.
By chance, the worst effect was on the engine room. The magnetic bottle held somehow, but both of the frigate’s drive plants immediately shut down, ruined beyond repair. The frigate, the H.M.S. Jungfrau of the Black Watch, went ballistic, traveling in a straight line with no power, no lights, no ability to turn or stop, beginning the Long Walk that would take its doomed crew beyond Victorian space and into eternity.
“Dammit!” Eder cursed. He did not want to risk any more ships until they fully engaged the Dominion’s blocking force. “Tell the other frigates and destroyers to fall back within range of our defensive guns and stay in tight formation. And send out another group of recon drones. I think the Dominions are being a little too coy and I want to know why.”
He looked at the holo display. The Dominion crescent and the Victorian oval sped towards each other. Then, as he watched, the recon drones finally got close enough to burn through the enemy jamming. Some of the fuzzy shapes in the holo began to change and form distinct, crisp targets. Identification symbols appeared and targeting data streamed down the right side of the holo display.
“Mildred, enlarge display!” Eder ordered. The display revealed more than a dozen battleships and dozens of cruisers. A spurt of fear ran though him, but he pushed it aside.
“Chief Kunnin?” he asked.
Kunnin shook his head. “They’re fuckin’ with us, Captain. They don’t have that many battleships in their entire bloody fleet, and if they had all those cruisers their first volley would have been a lot worse.” He turned to the lieutenant who was commanding the reconnaissance drones. “Lieutenant, can you steer three of the birds in on just one of those battleships. Boost their gain and have them go to continuous pinging.”
Lieutenant Letizia glanced at Eder, who nodded. The active sensors would make the recon birds an easy target to the Dominions, but it was worth it if they could find out if they were facing real battleships or just drones.
“Another missile volley coming in,” Chief Kunnin warned. “Three hundred and eighty missiles. ETA eleven minutes ten seconds.”
“All ships! Fire anti-missile drones!” Eder ordered, but his mind was on the visual display from the three recon birds. As they approached the two enemy battleships, they increased their speed and bore in.
Anti-missiles reached out for the reconnaissance drones, but their profile was very small and the first group of anti-missiles passed by without locking on or exploding. Lines of light — the computer display for enemy lasers — stabbed through the darkness but missed. The recon drones were less than fifteen thousand miles from the Dominion battleships now, approaching from an oblique angle that made it difficult for the other Dominion ships to get a lock on them.
“Lieutenant Letizia, steer one of the birds in an arc so that it comes up behind the battleship,” Eder instructed. “Once you’re behind it and have a direct path, shut down the drone’s drive and coast in. Go to passive sensors until I give you the word.” He was hoping that the Dominion battleships would focus on the incoming pair of birds and that one might slip past their defenses. “Activate the cameras on all three birds, full magnification.”
As Eder followed the recon birds on their flight toward the battleships, the Dominion missiles met the first wave of Victorian anti-missiles. There were fewer incoming missiles this time and drones chewed them up. Anti-missiles exploded in spherical formations, destroying everything inside the sphere, lasers stabbed out, and a remote controlled Bofor platform filled the approach path with pellets. The Dominion missiles jigged, dodged and feinted and filled the space with jamming, but one by one they fell to the fusillade. Three survived the onslaught, only to be lured away by decoys.
Captain Eder stood, hands clasped behind his back. The main holo display showed the Dominions still coming straight at them, still filling the space before them with jamming drones. Dammit, he hated to shoot into a mess like that. It would make for a lousy hit ratio, but it was time to make the Ducks react to him for a change.
“All ships, fire fifty percent load. Concentrate on the center of the Dominion line. Fire now!”
Two hundred and fifty missiles blasted into space and raced for the center of the Dominion line. Now we’ll see how you like it, Eder thought grimly.
Then Lieutenant Letizia was shouting urgently. “Contact! We’ve got visual contact with the Dominion battleship!” And there it was, a clear, crisp image as the recon drone finally reached visual range. At first it was just a speck, but it steadily grew larger and larger.
Instead of a large, menacing battleship, bristling with missile tubes and laser pods, the camera was focused on an oval shaped object with a bulging nose where the decoy pod was located.
It was a decoy drone.
Captain Eder glanced at sensor readout: It still showed the sensor readings of a large Dominion battleship. He smiled at Admiral Douthat, who was staring intently at the picture.
“Good! They aren’t as strong as they appear. If a few more of these ‘battleships’ are really drones, that should go a long way to even the odds,” he said with satisfaction.
“Let’s get some facts first before we celebrate,” she snapped. Eder’s smile dropped away. The Admiral was…what? Nervous? “Move our reconnaissance drones down the line and see what we find,” she ordered.
Eder glanced at Lieutenant Letizia and nodded. She turned her drone to run parallel along the line of the Dominion ships and increased its speed. It was several more minutes before they had a good view of the next Dominion warship.
Another decoy drone. A distraction, but not a threat.
Meanwhile the Dominions fired another volley. Only two hundred and fifty missiles this time. Eder ordered another volley from the Victorian line. The Dominions continued to fall back. By now all of the Victorian ships had sent reconnaissance drones chasing after them and one by one the Duck “battleships” and “cruisers” turned out to be decoy drones. Finally, more than an hour after the first missile had been fired, the recon drones penetrated to the center of the Dominion line, where they found numerous empty missile pods, six frigates and two carriers. The carriers appeared to be empty of fighters, but were flying in very close formation, sided by side, so that sensors from the Victorian ships showed them as one very large vessel.
The massive Duck strike force was nothing more than a paper tiger.
Using the guidance from the reconnaissance drones, Eder launched another volley of missiles, concentrating on the frigates and carriers. Twenty minutes later the enemy ships were dead or desperately limping away, trailing air, debris and bodies in their wake.
Meanwhile, Admiral Douthat was doing the math.
They had estimated that the Duck force chasing the Atlas had about one hundred and twenty war ships. They thought that sixty six or sixty seven Duck warships had gone in front of them to block the worm hole entrance, leaving a little more than fifty still trailing behind the space station Atlas. Those trailing ships were thought to be the Dominion’s smaller ships.
Instead, the Dominions had sent only eight warships to the worm hole entrance, leaving behind over a hundred ships following the Atlas. And even if they red-lined their engines, the Black Watch and Queen’s Own were almost five hours away from Atlas.
The blood drained from her face.
“We’ve been suckered,” she said, her voice numb and flat. “Atlas is virtually undefended. All that’s left is the Coldstream Guard.”