Chapter 52

Deep Space

Divinium Mine

"I finished scanning the ship hatches. Well, the remaining ship hatch, I suppose."

Sarah looked up from her personal display, where she'd been checking the status of their missile magazine.

"Ah? Any important discoveries?"

"Well, good news is, even if they had battlecruisers they won't be able to get them out. The hatch is too small. It can, however, accommodate a Q-caravan quite handily, and since it's width is similar to a heavy cruiser..."

"They might have some of those in stock, but we planned on that."

"Indeed. They also seem to be able to launch a ship every thirty minutes or so. Not sure why the cycle time is so long but honestly given the radiation outside it's understandable. They've launched another light cruiser, which has joined the rest, bringing them back up to three."

"Same class?"

"I think so? The sensor returns are getting better but I'm still having trouble even telling if their weapons are online or not, let alone telling if they have the same configuration. Their shields have the exact same energy signature however, as far as I can tell."

"Good enough for now. Cruise missile volley?"

"15 minutes out, if they keep their current acceleration. My guess is they'll separate any minute now, and activate the second stage, that way they'll be in powered range, at least if they're using Dominion Navy grade missiles. The details are also a bit hazy, but I think they've lost a solid five thousand missiles to the radiation outright, and a lot are trailing behind. It's not going to be a single, overwhelming punch, more like a wave with a lot of trailers coming in afterwards. A hundred and thirty thousand missiles, more or less, for the initial wave, then the rest trickling in over a minute or so."

"The trickle we'll crush, it's the main wave that worries me. How are our Dominion friends doing?"

"Pretty well, all things considered. They've dialed in the missiles according to our scans, and they've loaded their launchers with counter missiles. Don't know how effective they'll be in this mess, but hey, it's the thought that counts."

"Right. Well, nothing to do but wait."

Minutes passed, feeling like hours, as routine status reports came in and out, and then...

"Status change! The missiles have activated their second stage! Acceleration has changed to 7 000 gs, impact in five minutes!"

Sarah quickly checked the velocities, and nodded. The missiles had triggered their second stage at roughly seven million kilometers from the fleet, and their first stage had given them around 11.5 thousand kilometers per second of speed.

"Seven thousand gs, that's the Raptor missile's acceleration correct?" Asked Sarah as she idly checked some of the numbers to prove a hunch.

"Not the newest generation, those have seven point five thousand gs, but yeah, those are Raptor missiles alright. Same overall range, just lower acceleration and longer burn time for their drives. Makes them easier to hit for point defence at least."

Sarah nodded as she finished her calculations and the confirmation popped up on her implants.

"I see...so good missiles, but poor officers."

"Ma'am?"

"They triggered the second stage at seven million kilometers. That's the Raptor's range at rest." Elteria's eyes widened, and the AI nodded. Most people didn't realize that a missile's range was actually decided by its powered burn time, or how long the drive could hold up before shorting out or running out of energy, usually the former as energy storage wasn't exactly complicated to increase compared to the drives' lifespan. Which meant that they could have triggered the second stage several hundred thousand kilometers beforehand at least. Any naval officers would have seen it. "So they don't know what they're doing. Or maybe they do but they have some politico breathing down their necks. Doesn't matter, at least it tells us that they might have good hardware but the people behind those guns aren't as good as the Dominion's. That's one more advantage." Sarah looked at the display as the missile cloud positively leaped forward and began accelerating faster and faster towards them. "An advantage I'm afraid we're going to need. Prepare to launch counter missiles!"

Elteria nodded, and turned back towards the system display. Technically they could have fired their counter missiles much earlier, but after discussing it with Soliensky they'd decided to refrain from doing so. Six counter missiles weren't going to make a dent in that mass, even if every sub warhead hit, and now that the enemy knew at least one ship had modern missiles they were bound to be looking for the Seeker and trying to take it out. With the wall of gunships in front of them they were effectively invisible, but they could narrow down where they were in the formation from the missile launches.

A minute passed, then-

"Orders from the flag, firing counter missiles!"

The fleet vanished behind a solid wall of icons. The screen of corvettes and gunships alone fired almost ten thousand counter missiles. When added up with the motherships it totaled at over thirty thousand.

The enemy missiles immediately went into evasive maneuvers and cranked their ECM and jamming to maximum...but the Eternal Seeker's sensors saw right through it. They could only truly update the missiles before launch however, due to the environment, so the first counter missile volley would be the least effective. Still, given the distance involved, they would have the time for three, maybe four more counter missile volleys. That was the disadvantage of a single overwhelming launch compared to sustained fire, you could mass a lot of counter-missile volleys against them without effectively leaving the subsequent volleys untouched.

A minute later, the launchers of the fleet finished cycling, and another salvos rose from the ships. The Dominion's counter missiles accelerated at 9 000 gs, albeit with an 'at rest' range of merely 3 million kilometers. It would take almost two minutes for the TRF's salvo and the Dominion's own missiles to meet, at which point the counter missiles would just hit faster and faster as the cruise missile salvo got closer.

Then as the 3rd salvo was being targeted, space was filled with the flash of thermonuclear detonations.

Thirty thousand counter missiles separated into ten smaller yield warheads, and for a second every sensor, even the Seeker's, just blanked out. Some of the warheads were deliberately targeted, using miniaturized grav drives to push themselves closer to an enemy missile before detonating, while others, having lost their target lock, simply detonated as glorified flak.

The sensor hashing died down...and a hundred and twenty thousand missiles emerged from the chaos.

"50% kill rate. Not bad, all things considered."

Sarah nodded at Elteria's comment. Most counter missile's kill rate was about 60 to 70%, provided both sides were roughly equal technologically. Given the complete hash of the area and the Eternal Seeker's sensor assistance it sounded about right, especially for a volley that hadn't been dialed in on the enemy's ECM at launch.

The 3rd salvo launched, and the 2nd salvo met the enemy's volley. Once more, sensors blanked out...and this time only ninety thousand missiles emerged.

"98% kill rate! Oh yeah!" Elteria pumped her first into the air, and Sarah smiled. She guessed the same thing would be happening all over the Dominion's ships.

Then the 3rd salvo hit, and did even better, and forty thousand missiles vanished from the screen.

"Stand by point defence!" Yelled out Sarah as she gripped the armrest of the ship. The fourth counter missile salvo was going to be launched right as the enemy salvo entered the ships' defensive envelope.

It was over in an instant. The thirty five thousand remaining missiles in the main wave collided with the Dominion's gunship and corvette screen, a thousand ship strong, backed up by the handful of larger vessels. Together they mustered over fifteen thousand lasers, both offensive and defensive. In comparison even the Eternal Seeker's considerable anti-missile defenses were laughable.

Beams of coherent light stabbed into space as the last counter missile salvo rose to meet their foe. And the gunship screen dissolved into complete chaos.

"Status?" Asked Sarah as the system display completely blanked out, but the ship didn't even shake.

"We are completely unharmed. Our counter missiles and point defence guns took out the missiles heading our way. As for the Dominion..." The AI closed her eyes briefly. "Uh. We have about a hundred gunships reporting some form of damage. Two hundred more whose shields took a beating. About thirty are ejecting their escape pods, and another thirty aren't responding at all."

"That's...not bad at all." Especially compared to a hundred and fifty thousand strong missile volley! Granted, a hundred and twenty thousand, what with the late stragglers getting easily swatted out of the proverbial sky by the fleet's massed point defence fire.

"Yeah. A lot of the missiles seemed to have fallen for the Dominion's ECM. With all the hashing they simply couldn't make out the targets well enough, and many of them just...detonated targeting empty space."

"Well, thank the stars for that."

"Agreed." Elteria blinked. "Soliensky has ordered one of the lighter battle carriers to stay behind and collect the escape pods. Makes sense, those things suck."

Sarah chuckled. The AI was right, but Elteria had never been fond of battle carriers to begin with, seeing them as barbaric stop gaps at best, and abominations at worst. Part of the reason she'd been so miffed at the Kaiserschwert's offer for them to become one of its parasite crafts actually.

"True. Plus they'll have the capacity to conduct search and rescue, in case people got trapped in sections of the ships and couldn't make it to the escape pods."

"Right. As for the rest, we'll be proceeding as planned." Elteria smiled as Connie gave her the stink eye. "Sorry Connie, I'm wired into the tactical net, and it was an important update."

Sarah smiled. It was a nice reminder that technically, Elteria could run the entire ship by herself -had done it a few times in fact-, and they were more or less glorified passengers. Except for the captain. Mostly because she signed the AI's paychecks, but still.

"Alright, let's continue in formation then."

*****

"That's a lot of light cruisers." Said Elteria as the hatch began cycling for yet another ship.

Sarah nodded. By the very nature of their zero velocity approach, aiming to board the Divinium mine once they arrived, most of the travel time would be at the initial acceleration phase and the end deceleration phase. It had barely been an hour since they'd withstood the cruise missile volley, and they were already nearing missile range for the Dominion's ships. In that time the TRF had managed to squeeze another three light cruisers out of the asteroid, having visibly cut corners and lowered the cycle time to twenty minutes. That totaled to six light cruisers in space, backed up with every short range missile still in their silos, and the ten thousand or so drones deployed in a vast swarm to cover them.

"And they've cleared the hatch. Recalibrating sensors for...Uh?" Elteria blinked, then her face went white as she activated the all ships channel. "EVERY SHIP! TAKE EVASIVE ACTION!"

Sarah winced as the AI yelled out, and to her amazement the display dissolved into chaos as the Dominion Navy obeyed. Elteria technically had no authority over them, but the Dominion Navy was made of professionals. Backwater and hopelessly primitive, but professional regardless. And when you yell at an infantryman the universe over to take cover in a command tone, the soldier doesn't question, he just hits the deck.

The same bone deep programming took over in the Dominion fleet, and every ship went on a random vector...and a few seconds later icons on the display passed right where Soliensky's flagship would have been without those maneuvers.

"What the fuck?" Called out Sarah.

"Railguns! Oh stars, that's not a Low Verge ship! I have positive identification! That's a Khopesh-class light cruiser! Isalvi Confederacy Navy!"

Sarah looked at her AI in incomprehension for a second, before it hit her. The Isalvi Confederacy was the nation that manufactured their Artemis missiles, and that meant-

"It's a Mid Verge cruiser!" Continued Elteria, and Sarah looked at the display in horror.