Tactics of Conquest (Stellar Conquest) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to my friends and fellow science-fiction authors Vaughn Heppner and B.V. Larson, for their tireless encouragement, for persevering and showing me the way.

  Thanks to my readers – my lovely wife Beth, my friends and fellow authors Ryan King and Nick Stevenson, my beta reader Niover Corzo and my proofreader Kayla West, for their excellent critiques; their feedback has made me a better writer and this book a better novel.

  Cover by Humblenations.com

  By David VanDyke:

  Plague Wars series:

  The Eden Plague

  Reaper's Run

  The Demon Plagues

  The Reaper Plague

  The Orion Plague

  Cyborg Strike

  Comes The Destroyer

  Stellar Conquest series:

  First Conquest (within the anthology Planetary Assault)

  Desolator

  Tactics of Conquest

  Look for them at your favorite book provider or visit www.davidvandykeauthor.com

  © Copyright 2013 by the author. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means whatsoever (electronic, mechanical or otherwise) without prior written permission and consent from the author. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, businesses and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Tactics of Conquest

  By

  David VanDyke

  Chapter 1

  2125 AD, seven years after Desolator’s arrival in the Gliese 370 system

  “General Quarters. All hands to battle stations.”

  Admiral Henrich Absen felt an instant of relief as the automated voice of Conquest’s computer shattered his nightmare. In the dream he’d been back in the Tucson, staring at the message that outlined the destruction of Los Angeles. Knowing the bombs killed his family was hell, and knowing that his own failure to stop the other sub’s nuclear missile launch had doomed them had been hell’s lowest circle.

  Nothing could be as horrible as reliving that all over again.

  The noise sent him reaching for the khaki trousers draped over the nearest chair before he even came awake. Once he had them on he grabbed his shoes, socks and shirt, and bolted out his quarters door.

  Klaxons wailed as the advisory repeated. In the few steps to the bridge he managed to pull the shirt on, and he threw himself into his flag chair as soon as he crossed the threshold. “Kill the noise and report,” he snapped.

  Captain Mirza in the Chair waved at Johnstone at the CyberComm station and turned to Absen. “One of the sensor drones picked up something inbound at high speed. That alerted the big Sekoi array on Enoi, which took a look. It’s a Meme Destroyer.”

  “How fast?”

  “Point seven relative. If it does not decelerate, it will cross the orbit of New Jove in four hours, but we won’t see that time-delayed light until it’s another hour in.”

  Absen nodded. “Got it. Can we seed its path with mines?”

  “No, sir. We’re out of position. We can fire missiles, but at that speed we’ll be lucky to get any hits unless we manage to maneuver them directly in front of it.”

  “Which won’t do a terrible lot.”

  “No, sir.” Mirza lowered his head and shot the admiral a raised-eyebrow look. “This is what we’ve been waiting for, sir. I know you don’t want to, but we have to ask Desolator to do it. And, it will give us a real look at his capabilities…things he’s only claimed.”

  Absen nodded. “At least he has some living crew aboard. Assuming things go our way – and we have no reason to believe otherwise – it will be a victory for all of us. Conquest and her people will just have to wait their turn.”

  Mirza folded his hands tightly, elbows on the Chair’s arms. “I’ve taken the liberty of maneuvering toward the point of interception. That way we’ll be as close as possible, and you never know. We might have a chance to do something.”

  “Good idea. Carry on.” Absen leaned down to put his socks and shoes on. “COB, you got a cup for me?”

  From his seat near the rear of the circular bridge, Chief Timmons pulled a battered metal mug out of a cubbyhole and filled it from an even more battered stainless-steel coffee dispenser bolted to the floor. He handed it across to the admiral without moving his own cup, which rested one-handed on his ample gut.

  Absen tasted it. “Been stripping paint again, COB?”

  “Can’t abide that weak sauce the mess serves, sir.”

  Absen snorted and sipped again. “Well, at least I’ll be wide awake for the big show. Captain,” he turned back to Mirza, “you mind bringing up the holotank?”

  “Yes…I’m waiting to see that myself. Sensors?”

  Commander Scoggins snarled at her board as she repeatedly pressed keys, buttons, and touchscreens. Finally she mumbled something foul and reached beneath her brunette bob to plug in her link. A moment later the main holotank manifested itself in the center of the spherical bridge space, floating above the sunken cockpit where Chief Helmsman Okuda sat beneath his medusa.

  Okuda of course had no need of the holotank; helmsmen were always fully linked into VR space, their chip-filled brains well trained to interpret the three-dimensional environment of the interplanetary void.

  “We’re having a few problems with the boards,” Mirza said apologetically. “The links seem to work better, but even then…”

  “Does it have anything to do with the new AI engineering?”

  Mirza shook his head. “Shouldn’t be, sir. The AI isn’t connected in any way to ship systems yet, and it won’t be until it checks out completely.”

  Absen grunted. “Not so sure about AIs. With these new systems we’re getting, it looks like we’ll need one, but…”

  The bridge crew, including Mirza, kept silent, having heard the Old Man’s views on intelligent machinery many times.

  Absen stood and walked over to look closely at the holotank. “The Destroyer’s coming in well off the plane of the ecliptic. Looks like he won’t be able to hit much of anything unless he slows down and maneuvers.” By tradition dating back to the first attack on Earth, alien ships were all referred to as “he,” whether friendly or enemy.

  “Might be just a reconnaissance in force. Blow through, get a close look. Decel and attack or speed up and run, depending on what they see.”

  “And what will they see?” Absen put his hand out, waving it through the hologram. “Flensburg, Conquest, the defense installations we have built over the last ten years since we conquered this system, a dozen Hippo heavy cruisers…”

  “And Desolator.”

  Absen touched the glowing icon that represented the Ryss superdreadnought. “Out in the asteroid belt. Do you think the Meme have spotted him?”

  “No way to tell. He�
��s not giving off a lot of signature, as he’s just mining and manufacturing Conquest’s upgrades, and making his…sibling.”

  “Do we know what he plans to do?”

  Mirza shook his head in negation. “He’s behind us, relative to the enemy, so we saw the Destroyer first. We should be hearing from him in…” He turned to Johnstone with a questioning look.

  “About forty minutes, sir, at the earliest.”

  Absen took the next forty minutes to eat a ready ration and take a quick walk around the ship. With only half a crew, she could fight, but he’d really rather not. Conquest was an inverted teardrop three thousand meters in length and two in diameter, with enormously thick armor and weapons to match, and had been built to go head to head with a Destroyer and win that kind of slugfest, but battle meant casualties. Part of him wanted the fight, but his better judgment preferred a bloodless victory.

  I just don’t have the people to lose, he thought. Not with only a few million humans here in the system, most of them children. Every one has become that much more valuable.

  That bloodless victory would be especially welcome if it could be done so that the Destroyer couldn’t get a message off. In fact, he’d discussed this situation with his military council of humans, Ryss and Sekoi. Desolator claimed, with complete confidence, that he could kill any single Meme ship so suddenly that it would not be able to report how it happened.

  Absen hoped the Ryss machine intelligence was right.

  When he returned to the bridge, he picked up his cold mug of coffee and handed it to COB Timmons, who dumped the old and filled it with new steaming lifer-juice. That ritual, and a few sips, used up the time until the communication came through.

  “On screen, gentlemen,” Johnstone said as he played Desolator’s message. Rich tones filled Conquest’s bridge:

  Desolator to Conquest.

  In accordance with previously discussed courses of action, I am maneuvering to engage the enemy. I calculate a 99.9999% probability that I will eliminate this Destroyer and a 97.9673% probability that I will do so before it can send any transmission about my strike. The chance of failure represents the possibility that they maneuver during my TacDrive approach, or are transmitting a realtime update as they are vaporized. By the time you receive this, I and my crew will be on our way via TacDrive. We will engage at the coordinates in the accompanying data package.

  Desolator out.

  “Here are the coordinates,” Scoggins said, and in the holotank a ruler-straight line connected Desolator’s current position to a new, flashing icon. Another unbending line extended itself from the Destroyer, intersecting the engagement point. “Just about where we expected.”

  Mirza cleared his throat. “That’s assuming the Destroyer doesn’t maneuver, as he mentioned. If he does, Desolator will miss his interception.”

  Absen waved a confident hand. “But with the new TacDrive system, he has three jumps before he has to fall back on fusion drive, and even then he can chase the bastard down.”

  “Just not before the Meme get a message off.”

  “A message that will still take years to get anywhere, and then years more before the Meme react.”

  Mirza continued acting the devil’s advocate, as he often did with his admiral. “But if that happens, they will respond with overwhelming force.”

  Absen smiled without humor. “If that happens, we’ll just have to hope our plans, our strategy and our tactics can overcome overwhelming force.”

  Chapter 2

  Captain Chirom happened to be on watch on Desolator’s bridge when the Destroyer was detected, and so retained his seat. The spacious command center, so unlike that on Conquest or any of the other ships in the system, felt empty. The size of a small auditorium, high-ceilinged and built with decks that rose like steps toward the outer walls, it appeared more like a planetary mission control room of an earlier age than that of a ship of war. As large as Desolator was, space always seemed plentiful.

  “Desolator: what is your intended tactic?” Chirom asked into the air. He glanced across the triangular central space at the scattering of watchstanders of all three races. Only a skeleton crew was aboard, and some had not reached the bridge yet. Those already here seemed nervous, especially the Apes and Hippos.

  Chirom suspected that their fingers hovered near their manual bypasses, the ones that cut Desolator’s control and gave it back to their boards. These switches could not, by themselves, shut down the AI, but having them was a condition of returning full function to the machine mind that had almost killed them all.

  Another condition was that the Desolator AI’s residence chamber, visible over Chirom’s left shoulder, would no longer have any means of defending himself – not even doors. In the extreme case, his processors could always be smashed with the sledgehammers clamped to the walls.

  “I shall use the new TacDrive capability to jump in front of the Destroyer,” Desolator replied in his usual rich, warm tones. “I will deploy one Exploder, enable its targeting, and then jump away. This operation will take less than four seconds.” As with many other things, the crew and the AI now used Human standard measurements of time and distance, for simplicity and commonality.

  Chirom nodded approvingly. “And one Exploder will be sufficient?”

  “More than sufficient. In times past I have destroyed as many as three Destroyers with one Exploder.”

  The short-range antimatter missiles called Exploders are fearsome weapons, Chirom thought. Our ancestors harnessed the most powerful explosive force conceivable: the total conversion of matter and antimatter into energy. It awes me still.

  “Is there anything the crew need do?” Chirom asked.

  “Serve your battle stations according to plan, Captain Chirom, as I serve you.”

  Even after years, I’m still not used to being called Captain, Chirom thought. He’d been elevated to what was essentially an honorary position early on, an elder past his physical prime and useless for the repopulation of the Ryss race. There were not enough females to go around even for the young, and with the newly reinstituted monandry, it seemed he would never be glorified, never sire kits…and he wasn’t going to wait fifteen more years for one of the new litters to come of age, and him old and decrepit, barely able to rise.

  There were some advantages to the ways during the war, without this one-to-one mating scheme, the oldest of old ways. But I have resigned myself to bachelorhood, and perhaps someday, an honorable death. My achievements are all behind me now.

  “You serve all three races of EarthFleet,” Chirom replied, repeating an old discussion that soothed him somehow. “I thank you, old friend, for your kindness, and all your faithful service.”

  “You are most welcome.”

  The helm officer, a human male, spoke. “Captain, TacDrive capacitors at ninety-nine percent.”

  Chirom nodded in acknowledgement. “Desolator, you are cleared to proceed according to plan.”

  The TacDrive system was a modified version of the old photonic interstellar drive, which created an inertial suppression field throughout the ship, reducing Desolator’s effective mass by factors of millions while simultaneously propelling it directly forward in a perfectly straight line at nearly the speed of light. In effect, they disappeared from their original position and flew as fast as the known laws of physics would let them, protected by the field and the same gravitic compensators that allowed the crew to walk around as if they were on a planet.

  The major innovation to the TacDrive over the interstellar drive system was the addition of seventy-two auxiliary fusion reactors, as well as a sixfold increase in energy storage capacitors. Now, instead of waiting hours to power up one interstellar jump, Desolator required mere tens of minutes to fill a capacitor bank, and could jump up to three separate times before recharging.

  The Apes, that is, the Humans, came up with this idea, Chirom mused yet again. Instead of fighting an enemy head on, tooth and claw, their leader Absen had argued, giving Desolato
r this prodigious mobility would allow him to fight, run, fight and run again. It smelled faintly of dishonor to the Ryss, but they were not in charge; the Apes were, and had convinced the Hippos and Desolator himself.

  Thus the enormous superdreadnought, more than ten times the size of even Conquest and far more technologically advanced, had repaired, refurbished and reengineered himself using, Chirom grudgingly admitted, the best ideas of three races. Simulations had shown that now, at full strength, Desolator was quite possibly an entire order of magnitude more capable than before. He was a fleet-killer and a world-shatterer now, with antimatter fuel and explosives gleaned and distilled from star-stuff, armor composed of layers of neutronium and collapsium held in a ferrocrystal matrix, and energy weapons able to reach across planetary orbits.

  Desolator alone might now be more powerful than the entire Ryss fleet at the final battle for their homeworld.

  “One hundred percent,” the helm officer called, and at that moment came the vertigo and strange vibratory silence that accompanied the TacDrive.

  “Hologram display, please,” Chirom said, and the central area filled with an exquisite rendering of the system. Desolator’s glowing symbol proceeded at perceptible speed down a line toward its rendezvous with battle, even as the enemy Destroyer moved along its own.

  “Desolator, the enemy symbol is a prediction, correct?” Chirom asked into the air. He’d never been in the control center during a battle, though as Records Historian he had viewed all of the videos of Desolator’s engagements.

  “Correct, Captain. Under TacDrive our ability to collect data from the rest of the universe is limited.” Desolator meant, going at just under the speed of light, outside light was redshifted to darkness or blueshifted to hard radiation. Were it possible to view space while traveling, to their front would be nothing but blazing unlight as they slammed into every electromagnetic wave they traveled through, and behind them would be darkness as they nearly outran the rest. In a perpendicular ring around them, they would see a narrow band of visible light apparently split into a rainbow – a starbow, some called it – by their trajectory.