Admiral Michael Ward

Location: Harper’s Junction, Star Kingdom of Windsor

“Missile launch! Two-Zero bogies at negative two-four-five degrees, ninety-thousand kilometers and closing!” The assistant tactical officer’s fingers flew across his personal holo-tank.

One of the many upgrades to the Aggie, and other ships in Task Force 5.1 was that the information integration was next generation. Instead of pounding away at stations or PADS, each officer on the bridge was immersed in their own semi-transparent bubble of data. It allowed them to fight the ship, steer it, communicate, conduct EW ops, or whatever else their job required while still having visibility on the rest of the bridge. In case of an outage due to catastrophic damage, they also had a manual PAD hardwired into the ship, but it was much more effective in the immersive holo-tank.

“Shit,” ADM Ward cursed as he cycled through views and data. “These fucking stealth pods are killing us.”

‘Kill’ was a bit of a strong word, but death by a thousand cuts was just as dead as death by beheading. One just happened a lot quicker. It was common defensive doctrine to seed missile pods along avenues of likely approach into a system. The Windsor’s had done this, but their tech was next level and causing a headache for the Commonwealth tactical officers. Thankfully, the Commonwealth had launch the attack quick enough that the system couldn’t be saturated with them, or maybe the Windsor’s didn’t have many of them. Either way it didn’t matter. He just needed to find a way through the minefield.

They’d been taking these random, close-range missile launches on the nose for the last hour, and it had forced them to adapt their formation. Instead of the assault carrier and battleships being at the center of the formation, they were now in front. For the other carrier groups, with only a few gluon powered ships in the formation, the carriers themselves were taking point in total disregard of centuries of naval strategy. Just seeing the ships, with fifteen thousand souls on board, driving headfirst into enemy missile fire was enough to give any ADM an ulcer. Carrier Group Alpha was lucky, and Aggie was driving behind the two battleships and providing a second layer of point defense for the more vulnerable, smaller classes bringing up the rear. Still, it was warfare turned on its head for any seasoned officer.

At ninety thousand kilometers, the missiles launch took almost no time to reach the lead battleship. He was keeping a close eye on the power readings as the twenty missiles barreled down on the behemoth.

One of the missiles seemed to have malfunctioned and fallen behind.

The nineteen missiles blazed in and the battleship engaged. Only a handful of countermissiles were in a position to fire and reach their target in the short lifespan of the engagement. The rest were handled by the point defense lasers and railguns, and enhanced EW. Although, they were saving the EW capabilities until they really needed it.

The point defense lasers cycled faster and were more powerful thanks to the ship’s new power source. They lanced out at the speed of light and obliterated the missiles, or at the very least, boiling their sophisticated silicone brains so they became useless hunks. The latter detonated prematurely and fired their bomb-pumped ordinance into empty space. Only one missile made it close enough to actually threaten the battleship, but the hypersonic railgun rounds put a wall of duro-steel in the things incoming path and it disintegrated before detonating.

Ward had his Command AI run the calculations, and he was correct. The optimum attack profile should have detonated the missiles 1.32 seconds earlier.

All around him the bridge was clapping and sighing with relief. It was starting to grate on all their nerves whenever the enemy suddenly popped up and took pot-shots at them. Even an assault carrier could suffer from one lucky hit.

“Eyes front! Look sharp!” he barked from his position at the center of everything.

Three seconds later, his snap was completely warranted.

“Missile launch! One-two-zero bogies at one-eight-zero degrees, one-six-three thousand kilometers and closing.

ward snarled as the enemy successfully launch an up-the-shirt volley. It was about to take his carrier group directly up the ass. Even worse, the more vulnerable, smaller ships were its target.

“EW protocol Alpha-One-Zero,” he decided to stop holding his cards back. “All vessels below battleship class need to increase speed and try to draw parallel with us. We’ll fall back along with Monty and try to cover them.”

The battleship Bernard Montgomery, or Monty for short was already cutting speed to try and take the brunt of the missiles’ attack. Aggie would follow suit, but it was the battleship’s job to take the hits. He had ten thousand marines to get to the surface.

It was going to be nearly a full minute until those missiles reached his carrier group. Either he’d be in position or he wouldn’t. It was a smart trap by the Windsor’s and he’d walked right into it. He needed to trust his crews to pull through and fight the battle. Despite being a long way from his time as a tactical officer, or manning a missile tube or energy weapon, he still felt the pull to be more involved, but that was just a recipe for disaster. The ADM couldn’t micromanage. That would just get everyone killed.

“Bring up the Windsor’s fleet movements,” he subvocalized. He AI automatically switched from the incoming batch of missiles and focused on the real threat.

The task forces combined AIs had been crunching the numbers on the enemy disposition since entering the system. Coupled with the data received from the spy ship, they had a pretty good idea what they were about to go up against. The Windsor’s had forty-one ships in Harper’s Junction. They were forming up a couple million kilometers from the planet and hadn’t committed to any action yet, but their time for planning was running out. Of the forty-one ships, eleven were battlecruisers, with the remainder being cruisers and destroyers, with more of the latter. On paper, the Commonwealth should be able to wipe their ass with this puny force, but Ward knew better. Their ships were bigger, stronger, and better-equipped than their commonwealth counterparts…or at least they used to be. He’d watched holos of one of their battlecruisers fighting three Commonwealth battleships to a standstill in Queensland.

he knew, but it still filled him with the familiar dread of losing his sailors to achieve the mission. He didn’t let anyone see that as he watched the enemy gathering their forces.

He barely felt the rumble of the incoming missile salvo finally reach him, which was a good thing. Damage reports filled the side of his holo and he focused on those.

They’d done a good job of getting in position, but good wasn’t perfect. One of his cruisers hadn’t been fast enough and had been nearly crippled. They were down to twenty percent of their normal speed, and quickly falling out of formation. Some other ships had minor damage, but they would be able to conduct repairs and press into the fight.

“Have a destroyer fall back as an escort, and they can start to make their way toward Bravo’s position,” he ordered. The AI took that and calculated the escort that would have the easiest time completing the mission while not taking too much away from the carrier groups overall strength. It took less than a second before the orders were signed, sealed, and delivered over TACCOM to the appropriate destroyer captain. The ship broke off to swing back around toward the cruiser, which the carrier group continued forward.

“Have we had any luck cracking that stealth?” he asked his bridge crew.

No matter what the holo movie’s said, perfect stealth was impossible. Things like missile pods needed energy for launch and fire control. Those telemetry links took power, and if the pod was advanced enough to maneuver, it needed even more. Space was big, which helped, but it was virtually impossible to get rid of all emission signatures. They just needed to look close enough, and in the right place, to find it.

They took two more launches into their faces before they had enough data to make some educated guesses, and even then, the new algorithms the AI was using were spotty and had them jumping at shadows. Luckily, an energy blast didn’t cost much, and if it was a potential, big cluster of pods, they could spare a missile for a more precise hit.

“Enemy movement!” Ward pulled his head out of the last sensor sweep for pods and switched his displays.

They were still sixty million kilometers out from the planet, fifty-six from the enemy, and forty-eight from effective missiles range, but that distance was going to close fast now that the dance was in motion.

He watched for a full minute in silence as the Windsor’s formation started to move and separate. By then, he could tell what they were up to.

“Get me the commanders on the QE,” he ordered, and a few seconds later the AI had the FTL comms with the other carrier group commanders scattered across the system. The new system was dubbed, simply, QETACCOM, and it was still in the testing stages. Of course, some civilian engineer thought an engagement was a great testing ground.

“Gentlemen,” the three RADMS nodded back to him. The commander of Bravo looked a little sheepish, and he should be after that dismal arrival, but Ward had more pressing issues than chewing his ass. “It looks like they’re coming out to play. As you can see, they’ve split their forces in two. One is heading to Alpha, and the other to Delta.” Alpha and Delta had the two fastest approaches, so it made sense to target them first. “Charlie, you’re going to increase to flank speed and get your marines on that planet. Hold the orbitals for as long as you can and provide fire support for the landing. If you can’t hold, you can’t hold, but make sure your marines are ready for orbital retaliation. I’m sure the Windsor’s will leave a surprise or two on the dark side, so keep your eyes open.”

The RADM nodded and cut the link. He had a landing to manage.

“Bravo, you’re going to get your shit together and reinforce us.” Ward studied the holo-tank for another second to see what the AI’s had determined.

That was the great thing about these new AI’s, they gave much more detailed probabilities. With all the info in their databanks they were looking for whatever Ward had programmed them to look for, and things he hadn’t asked for, but became relevant as the situation changed. It looked like the AIs had determined that six of the eleven battlecruisers were on route to engage Delta and five of the six had a high probability of being state-of-the-art builds. That made sense. Delta only had an assault carrier, one battleship, and one battlecruiser that were upgraded. That was way too fair of a fight for Ward to accept. The Windsor’s own AI’s must have spotted the force discrepancy and targeted the more vulnerable formation. The remaining four battlecruisers, and significant portion of the smaller ships, of which five cruisers were high-probability new builds, were headed for Aggie. If he had to guess, they were meant to be a harassing force to slow him down, and limit his planetary invasion options while Delta was eliminated, and then the surviving Windsor’s would hit his engaged ships from the flank.

Thankfully, Bravo’s transition had sucked. He would never tell the RADM his, but it might have turned out to be a good thing.

“Reinforce Delta, and move your ass. Ward out.” He cut the line and let his people get to work. Delta was going to take a beating, but the RADM in charge was already cutting speed and slightly altering course to lengthen the time before an engagement. He couldn’t do too much, or he wouldn’t be a threat and the Windsor’s would change tactics, but the more time Bravo had to arrive the better.

All of the tactics and strategy involved filled his mind as he prepared for his carrier, three battleships and one battlecruiser to go up against nine, smaller, upgraded Windsor ships, but he kept an eye open and watching Charlie. They were unhindered as they quickly advanced on Harper’s Junction. Their battle would be on the ground, something Ward didn’t envy. He was a spacer and not a ground pounder for a reason.