Two Worlds – Chapter 340

Benjamin Gold

Location: CCIWS Stakeholder’s Views, Contested System, Unaligned Space

“Course change,” tactical announced as the holo-tank updated. The big red icon that was CWS Red Tides was breaking off from its coverage of the civilian ship it was escorting. It wasn’t exactly coming to meet them, but it was angling to bring them into weapons range while still providing support for the civilian ship.

Ben didn’t respond as his mind ran mental calculations honed from years as a spacer. He didn’t like the results. The Collies ships would beat them to the planet where the Confederation’s team had already set up a ground facility. Their own survey ship was still in orbit collecting data, and was going to have to move in the next few hours or be a sitting target for energy weapons.

The only way to get to protect the civilians was to commit A1, and if he did that . . . he shuddered to think of the results. A beep in his mind announced the arrival of the data he’d been waiting for.

“Staff,” he stated, and the department OICs rushed to gather around them. Even with the threat of impending violence, they were in the waiting period of hurry up and wait.

The senior officers on the ship studied the data for a second in silence. “She’s a pretty standard ship,” Ben broke the silence.

Red Tides wasn’t the newest class of Commonwealth destroyers, but it was under a decade old. It was three hundred meters from bow to stern; in the classic Commonwealth dagger shape. Two meters of thick duro-steel protected her body along with additional energy shielding that was the most common form of defense in today’s naval world. Her armament showed four laser cannons and eighteen missile launchers, but Ben had to wonder if that was still true.

Modern combat theory, which the ET’s had given humans vicious instruction on, called for close up brawls at only a few hundred thousand kilometers. The long-range missile engagements of the past were gone. It was stupid to get rid of all your long-range weaponry, but having over four times as many missiles as laser was strategically idiotic.

A1 itself boasted almost the exactly opposite weapons compliment. The Confed destroyer was a new build, about twenty meters longer than Red Tides but with a much sleeker design. A1 was a pretty ship, but this wasn’t a beauty contest, and her class hadn’t seen much hard fighting.

<That might be about to change,> he grimaced.

Ben’s destroyer mounted fourteen energy cannons powered by one of the destroyers two reactors. They had a slower cycle time than the larger warships that boasted more power plants, but if he followed the programmed fire plans, he could have at least one gun firing at least every two seconds. It wasn’t half bad for the second smallest ship in the fleet.

Longer range combat was not in A1’s cards, but the designers kept a trio of missiles and loaded magazines on board to dissuade pirates. The older privateering vessels were built for the old types of combat, so the destroyers, who did a lot of commerce protection, still needed to be able to reach out and slug a pirate in the face if they needed to from a few million klicks.

A1 definitely had the advantage in energy mounts, but that wasn’t all. She was fast, probably thirty percent faster than Red Tides, and that was because her armored hull was only one point two meters thick. It might sound stupid when you first heard it. After all, sacrificing hull protecting had always been a big no-no in naval combat. Speed was great, but it didn’t meant shit if you couldn’t survive getting hit.

That’s where shields changed everything. A1 was equipped with what tech experts were calling fourth generation shields. First generation were the bubble shields the ETs first sent over and were basically jerry-rigged to the ships. Second generation were the improved versions that were built by human manufacturers; but actual combat soon showed that bubble shields had their flaws. Third generation was the first iteration of the directional shielding that saw action – mostly by ground units – at the battle for Earth’s survival. Now, with all the data at their disposal, the weapon engineers had come out with the fourth, new and improved, generation of shields. In the grand scheme of things, it was worth loosing point eight meters of armor; which just slowed the ship down and wouldn’t stop a blast for a decent energy cannon anyway.

“What do you think . . . second generation,” Ben mused as he looked over the technical readouts they were getting from Red Tides.

“Maybe first, sir,” the tactical officer was doing the same thing. “The Collies blew their load refitting to fight in Sol. They’ve started to rebuild that capacity, but their focus in on the big boys. Little guys like Red Tides, or even us for that matter, don’t get the upgrades nearly as much as we should.”

Ben nodded. That was true in every human fleet in the galaxy. The big boys won fights, but the little guys kept the blood of civilization flowing. Admirals and politicians often forgot the latter. Thankfully, A1 was just six months out of the yards, and wasn’t due for its annual refit for another six. She was fully cocked locked and ready to rock. The problem was, Ben didn’t want to lock her into anything yet.

“We get a response yet?” he asked comms.

“I think they’re thinking it over, sir,” comms replied.

QE communication wasn’t Ben’s forte, but he knew it involved a pair of entangled particles. Since one side wasn’t going to give the other side the metaphysical codes to their particles, opposing commanders were forced to rely on old-fashioned light speed communication. At just over fifteen million kilometers, that meant just over fifty seconds to get a transmission to Red Tide’s captain. If they answered right away that was a two-minute lag. Since it had been five minutes since they sent the polite message to talk, the other skipper was warry of A1.

Ben didn’t blame him. After seeing whole fleets fucked by cyber-attacks, everyone was on edge. Word on the grapevine was all starfaring nations were building cyber commands from the bottom up, with all kinds of nasty surprised for the enemy. If Ben was in the other man’s positions, he would be isolating systems to receive an inbound communication, and that took a minute. It gave him more time to plan.

With tactical at his side, he started going over possible approach vectors, long range missiles salvos to distract and force the enemy to maneuver. They could even target the survey ship when they were in range, but Ben ruled that out. He wasn’t about to blow a civilian ship into finely dispersed matter. That would be a PR nightmare for the Confederation. As much as he might disagree with his father, and the other corporate bigwigs, there were good people in the Confederation just trying to live their lives. He wasn’t going to make that any harder than it needed to be.

“We’ve got a reply,” comms announced when Ben was going over a close-range battle plan to eviscerate the Collie ship.

“Put it in the tank,” Ben returned to his captains’ chair.

“Unidentified warship, this is Lieutenant Commander Nickels of the CWS Red Tides, you will immediately about face and leave this system. This is now Commonwealth territory, and we will defend it as such,” a young-looking man with blue in his eyes, a hard expression, and a nose he had to know was too big; looked out at Ben with determination.

<Someone out to prove something, shit,> he didn’t like the look in the other captain’s eye.

“Record message, audio only,” Ben ordered and cleared his throat. “Greetings Commander Nickels, I am Captain Gold, we do not wish to engage in any hostilities with you or your nation. As you undoubtedly already know, we have a survey ship and ground installation on the third planet from this star. We are here to rendezvous with them, resupply, and catalogue any scientific experiments. We respectfully request that you honor the standard terms of planetary exploration,” he nodded, and the comms team bundled that up and sent it back to the Collies.

“Resupply?” tactical raised a thin eyebrow. She was pretty, but he was married.

“If they think we’re low on food, ammo, or even morale is low from a long time in space, that all plays to our advantage,” Ben replied, as he stared intently at the holo-tank.

The reply came just over three minutes later. “Captain Gold,” there was a sneer in the other skipper’s voice Ben expected.

First off was Ben’s rank. Thomas Gold couldn’t have his son running around as a mere lieutenant commander in a nation state he basically ran. There was an image for the Gold family to maintain. Dear old dad tried to get him a spot as a rear admiral commanding and entire task force. As meteoric as that rise would be, Ben knew he didn’t know the first thing about running a large ship, much less several of them. He saw some of the Confed’s flag officers give a visible sigh of relief when he turned the spot down.

Next, Thomas tried to get him a battleship command, but Ben didn’t feel comfortable. In the end, they decided he’d hold the rank of full captain but command the next largest ship from his last command. That’s how he ended up with A1, and that’s why the Collie LCDR was rolling his eyes from millions of klicks away. That, and his surname.  

<Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to tell him I’m a Gold,> he’d be surprised if there wasn’t some kind of bounty on his head.

“Normally we would respect the territorial rights of boots on the ground, but the Commonwealth does not recognize your nation,” the way he spit this out made Ben sigh in exasperation. “Even if you were here first, you are still members of the Commonwealth, and as such, this is our system. I repeat, leave this system now, or we will blow you out of space. Commander Nickels, out.”

There was silence on the bridge. “Well, that was productive,” Ben sighed, and was glad he’d started going over plans with tactical. “Make sure that conversation is in the log. I want no discrepancies about whose fault this is. Continue heading, and bump up our speed; not full power, but enough to get the good commander to reconsider his approach. We’ll be in missile range in,” he glanced at the range finder, “a little over thirty minutes. We will not fire first. When news of this gets out, it’ll be the Commonwealth who instigated this crisis. Not us,” he made sure the crew understood that. “But that doesn’t mean we won’t defend ourselves. Call the crew to action stations, and let’s get ready to rumble.”

“Really, sir . . . rumble,” tactical kept her eyebrow raised as a klaxon blared and the chief of the boat called action stations. The important part of the warning was the “this is not a drill” part. They’d only had drills so far.

Ben just shrugged, and turned his eyes back to the holo-tank. “Comms, send a message received to Red Tides.”

He thought about sending a quick message to Jacobi. All ships ran on Aurum time, so she was probably close to her lunch break, and might even get back to him before the shooting started. The thought only lasted a second before he discarded it. He didn’t want to worry her, and he needed to keep his mind in the game. A skipper sneaking off to his cabin right before a fight didn’t look good.

He had just under three hundred souls that were counting on him. The odds were in their favor. He’d give A1 seventy-thirty odds of coming out on top, but nothing was guaranteed in combat. He’d seen that much in his experience. He put thoughts of Jacobi to the side and focused on acceleration rates, firing plans, and ammunition count. Most of all, he thought of the letters he’d need to write to the families of the dead before this day was over.

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