Vengeance Weapon

* * *

We had a meeting of the Chiefs of Staff and the Allied war industry ministers the very next day. I knew the military-industrial potential of the Federation and the lizards quite well, but the capabilities of the quargs really shocked me. After listening to Head Kosh who led the military-industrial complex of our former enemies, I clearly understood the danger we had got rid of by avoiding further confrontation with the quargs. Now I understood how the quargs managed to rebuild their defeated fleets at such a fast rate. Yes, technologically they lagged behind the Federation in many respects, but they far exceeded us in production and shipbuilding capacity. The amount of extracted and processed resources they produce, our industry could not even dream of. This is what can be achieved when the economy is fully mobilized for military purposes. About this I once told Tobolsky, but at the time the highest officials of the Federation were not too inclined to listen to me. Well, all that power was now ready to work for us, willingly and enthusiastically, and I wasn’t going to pass up opportunities that fell into my hands.

According to my calculations, ten to 15 Black Dragons accompanied by a large unit of «Invisibles» and other drone torpedo carriers would be enough to raid the toads’ systems. At this point we only had two Black Dragons, and they were under repair, but with our newfound capabilities, we could build the right number of ships in a couple of months. Unfortunately, the discontinued supply of components from the Empire reduced the combat characteristics of the new ships somewhat, but just somewhat, because we were already quite capable of producing the protective field generators and plasma weapons ourselves, albeit less advanced than the Imperial ones.

The situation was worse with the camouflage field generators. We managed to get quite a few of these generators from the Empire, enough to equip many dozens of ships, but we also used imperial generators for drone torpedoes, and torpedoes, as you know, are disposable. So now the torpedoes will inevitably have to be equipped with camouflage devices of our own making, which were very inferior to the imperial ones, and that meant their consumption will be much higher than in the last battle. However, I planned to solve this problem by using giant quarg aircraft carriers as torpedo carriers.

The quargs were also to take over 70 percent of the torpedo production. The Federation was left with the sole responsibility of manufacturing electronic warfare systems and warheads with disposable plasma weapons. The lizards supplied the auxiliary engines, and everything else, including the final assembly of the torpedoes, was taken care of by the quargs.

With this approach, we could have provided our entire fleet with torpedoes in the time we had left.

* * *

About a week after the first part of the operation plan was approved, I got a call on my tablet from Lit-ta.

“Good to see you, Admiral,” I smiled at the image of the lizard on the screen.

“Hello, Igor,” Lit-ta was very serious, but that didn’t stop her from addressing me by my name, “you’ve climbed so high now, so I’m tempted to ask if you can give me some of your time.”

That was an astonishing politeness for the lizards, who simply do not accept such curtsies. But knowing this cunning reptile quite well, I guessed that she was just slightly mocking me, not maliciously, but just for fun.

“I always have time for you, Lit-ta, you know that,” I grinned back.

“Who can understand you, people,” the lizard showed me her forked tongue, “sometimes you get so blown away by the career ladder that you become unrecognizable.”

“Isn’t that how it works with the lizards?” I was genuinely interested.

“It happens. It’s true, mostly in males, but it’s a rare phenomenon for them, too. Don’t get worked up, I’m just in a good mood.”

“Yeah, I see it”

“I have something new for you to look at,” Lit-ta nodded her head, “Especially since your woman had a hand in it.”

So that’s where Inga has been for the past week. She was begging Jeff for a business trip to the lizards, but she didn’t tell me much about it. Her acquaintance with Lit-ta seems to have had an unexpected sequel.

“Are you inviting me to visit again?”

“No. You don’t have to use the portal this time. Your Inga told me that you would enjoy flying to Ganymede to visit Colonel General Schiller. For old time’s sake, he agreed to provide Major Lavroff with the Academy’s range and a unit of cadets to test our innovations.”

“Lit-ta, didn’t Inga tell you how the last such event on this range ended?”

“Of course she did, she was a direct participant in those events. We and the humans have a very similar sense of humor, Igor, and your woman has a very talented way of telling army tales. Honestly, I would love to see the place where all this was going on and the General who allowed this whole circus to take place on his training ground.”

“Lit-ta, I owe a lot to this General.”

“I see,” Lit-ta showed me her tongue again.

I last saw the Chief of the Planetary Commando Academy when I was still at the rank of Lieutenant General. In fact, I was very grateful to Inga for the chance to see again this now old officer, who had done so much for me during a very difficult period in the beginning of my military career and the first steps of the Lavroff Weapons Company.

In all the whirlwind of preparation for the raid on the star systems of the toads, I had somehow lost sight of the changes that have occurred around my humble person in connection with my new assignment. And changes, as it turned out, did take place.

Colonel General Schiller, of course, has not forgotten how once Igor Lavroff stood before him for the first time in the company of four other similar candidates and tried to prove to the Head of the Academy that he was worthy of becoming a cadet at the Planetary Commando Academy. But now from the Admiral’s boat, which had landed on the edge of the school’s plaza, emerged not a cadet, but Fleet Admiral Igor Lavroff, Commander-in-Chief of the combined allied forces, accompanied by Admiral Lit-ta, who had led the lizard squadron in the last battle.

And as he was visited by such guests, the Colonel General was not going to miss the opportunity to squeeze the maximum pedagogical benefit out of this visit for the cadets of his Academy, which had long been his life’s work.

The parade of cadets and military equipment, the Academy anthem, the appearance of the color guard… In general, I didn’t remember being greeted like that anywhere else.

But I haven’t forgotten anything, either: my assignment as an instructor when I was a first-year cadet, the provision of the guarantee in court when my fate hung in the balance, the assistance in the development and testing of the first samples of new weapons, I remembered a lot more as I was going to Ganymede.

I remembered, and for the first time exercised the right that President Tobolsky had once granted me by his personal decree. After looking at my reflection in the mirror, I came to the conclusion that the uniform of a commando general suited me better than that of a fleet admiral.

We walked along the frozen line of cadets. I didn’t know what Inga was thinking, and I certainly couldn’t imagine how Lit-ta was looking at this action, but just now I clearly realized that everything I said about being no longer an Imperial general, but a citizen of the Earth Federation was true. I felt like I was back home.

General Schiller marched out to meet me, but I was not going to wait for his report, as a senior in rank and position should. I stood at attention and was the first to salute the Colonel General.

Chapter 2

They fell silently right out of the clear midday sky. There was no howling of engines, no roar of air being torn, and no clouds of plasma around the nose fairings. Only fuzzy blurry points, poorly distinguishable even in the visible spectrum, rapidly increasing in size as they were getting closer. When they were detected by the scanners of the commando company, which held the defense of the conventional fortified area, it was too late – a dense volley of light plasma cannons has already hit the positions of the cadets.

“60 percent of the defensive personnel and equipment have been taken out of action,” unemotionally stated the range computer. The attackers suffered no losses. I couldn’t even name what was falling from above onto the Planetary Commando Academy range, though the word «creatures» flashed in my mind at the first glimpse of the attackers’ battle lines.

Inga wasn’t there; she was commanding the landing party, just like last time, and Lit-ta was just staring impassively at the projection screen, with occasional brief glances in my direction. General Schiller seemed at a loss for words and only gloomily watched the continuing beating of the cadet company. The best company in his Academy, by the way. Two-thirds of his men and robots had already been computed into losses and were frozen motionless in the places where they had met their conventional death or destruction. But the Head of the Academy did not teach his cadets for nothing. The remnants of the company remained combat-ready and now met the attackers with heavy fire, trying to organize a flexible mobile defense of the fortified area.

I wasn’t too interested in the outcome of the battle, especially since, despite the cadets’ stubborn and quite skillful resistance, they didn’t stand a chance. I looked at the attackers with interest. This, it turns out, is what my wife has been so enthusiastic about lately at the lizards’ planet, which Jeff and Professor Stein have also visited several times. For some reason they did not tell me about their venture, though, perhaps they were right, as I was frankly not up to it lately.

I’ve seen a similar equipment before. When we first came into contact with the lizards, it was such «dinosaurs» that met in a deadly battle with quarg combat robots on the planets of Iota Persei, the star system of Lit-ta, then Governor General. But they were not exactly the same. Those biological machines didn’t have the plasma cannons, camouflage field generators, or even the light force shields that were present here. These beasts were as big as our Bisons, but they were not machines by human standards. Their hulls were grown rather than manufactured in factories, but the flexible and malleable living tissue, covered with thick segments of organometallic armor, coexisted in them with the smooth metal of the plasma cannons and with the grids of the force-field emitters. Technogenic elements fused with living tissue to form a single whole, and this symbiosis formed the strange and terrifying creatures now rushing toward the positions of the cadet company. As it turned out, these were only visible combinations of the technologies of two, or rather, even three races, representatives of one of which we had never seen. The interior of the «dinosaurs» concealed even more surprises.

“Why didn’t they burn up in the atmosphere during the landing?” asked the slightly recovered Colonel General, “They entered the atmosphere directly from space, without dropships or any protective gear.”

“Their bodies have a special organ for correction of gravitational attraction,” explained Lit-ta, “Approximately the same are used as engines for drone torpedoes and hybrid Black Dragon-class battleships. Only here they are very small and therefore low-power, otherwise they would take up too much space. So the ‘Theropods’ can’t fly, but they have enough power for controlled landings, as well as for long and high jumps during combat, as you may have already seen.”

“What did you call them? ‘Theropods’?” asked the General.

“Yes. This name was suggested by Major Lavroff. It seems that such predatory dinosaurs once lived on Earth.”

“it is quite suitable," agreed the General, as he continued to watch the gradually waning combat. In fact, only one commanding robot of one of the cadets and a pair of his surviving drones continued to operate. The robots skillfully used the folds of the terrain and the remnants of the defensive fortifications, they constantly changed positions and hit the encroaching ‘Theropods’ with all available weapons. Actually, they should have been clamped and destroyed long ago, but the cadet managed to slip away, he broke wawy himself each time and led his drones out of the shrinking ring of enemies.

“You train great fighters,” I smiled at General Schiller.

“It used to be easier,” the clearly flattered General grumbled back, “but now, after one troublesome cadet came in six years ago, I don’t have time to retrain the men on the new types of combat equipment. I’m not complaining, though, as I don’t get the news of my graduates’ deaths very often anymore.”

“Lit-ta, are these drones or manned machines?” I switched to another topic with a nod to Schiller.

“Neither, ” the lizard replied with a little hesitation, “It’s a pack with a leader.”

I didn’t expect such an answer. “Can you tell me more about that?”

“This is one of our latest developments,” Lit-ta turned to me and the General, “In principle, we have been developing the topic of artificially grown multilayer neural networks for a long time, but the real breakthrough came only recently, after our contact with you. You are also working in this direction, only you don’t grow neural networks, you simulate them with your computers. As it turns out, your theoretical work goes well with our pseudo-living neural clusters. Professor Stein, when we showed him our products, invited his former colleague from the Colonial Tech… However, these details are not so important. The bottom line is that the ‘Theropods’ are indeed unmanned, but they don’t require a constant, sustained communication link like your drones do. Their pseudo-brain consists of a very dense neural network grown by our bioengineers and trained in many thousands of training fights according to techniques compiled by your mathematicians. The result is an artificial brain with the rudiments of imitative intelligence. Of course, it is not a mind, but if you compare it to your animals, approximately it reaches the level of a very intelligent wolf, only obedient and perfectly trained. A wolf, as far as I know, is a pack animal, and any pack needs a leader. In the battle we just witnessed, Major Lavroff acted as the leader.”

“So a pack of ‘Theropods’ is capable of fighting on its own, even in conditions of complete suppression of communication channels?” General Schiller was interested.

“For a while, definitely. Even an individual ‘Theropod’ will continue to follow the last order received, or a predetermined sequence of orders. The set of these orders, of course, is limited, but the list is quite extensive. For example, you and I have seen the pack perform the task of capturing and mopping-up the territory. After receiving the order, the Theropods fought on their own. Major Lavroff did not interfere in the actions of her subordinates.”

“But the latest models of our drones can also continue to perform the received task in the absence of communication," I reminded Lit-ta, “This function is especially developed in boarding robots. How are the ‘Theropods’ better?”

“They’re better because we can produce millions of them a month, Admiral, as long as we have enough plasma cannons and protective and camouflage field generators," Lit-ta replied softly, “But now we have the quargs with their fantastic industrial power, so there won’t be a problem with that, I suppose.”

I nodded silently to Lit-ta and pulled out my communicator.

“Mr. Minister of Defense? Admiral Lavroff speaking. Do you have an opportunity to come to Ganymede? How urgent? Well, I think you should see this. I believe what we want to show you can make a big difference in the coming campaign. General of the Army Knyazev? Undoubtedly! His presence is also highly desirable. Thank you. We’ll be expecting you.”

“Nelson, Knyazev, Lavroff, Kotova, I beg your pardon, Major Lavroff…” General Schiller said thoughtfully, running his hand over the gray hair at the back of his head and taking out his communicator, “it surely reminds me of something… I think I’ll warn the Academy’s supervisor, General of the Army Vasnetsov, and the civilian administration of Ganymede as well, because, you know, anything can happen.”

* * *

General Las once again carefully reread his agent’s report. Dr. Silk’s trail was discovered in the Kappa Giyan star system, recently overrun by the toads but retaken from them during a counterattack, planned by Marshal Klink. The central planets of the system survived two landing parties, first by the toads and then by the Imperial forces, which knocked the «frogs» out of the cities and industrial areas they captured with heavy losses. To say that the infrastructure of the planets has suffered is to oversimplify the facts. Actually, all that was left there was ruins. The detritus of the multi-level cities were to be cleared and rebuilt for many months.

It was there, in the chaos and confusion of the front-line zone, that the elderly volunteer was found, succumbing to the wave of patriotic enthusiasm, caused by the hysteria in the media. He arrived from the central worlds of the Empire to help the authorities of the system to rescue people trapped in ruins and to rebuild destroyed cities and military facilities. It was quite reasonable, by the way, and plausible.

But Dr. Silk did not hold back, he could not keep away unnoticed, engaged in some low-key debris removal, when millions of affected civilians were in urgent need of medical care, and medical personnel and equipment were woefully lacking. The doctor remembered his younger years, when as a field medic he used to pull guys and girls back from the brink of death, those, who had been cut with plasma cutters from the warped armored compartments of the walking tanks after the battle.

The doctor opened himself up. He was still listed as Colweg, a service systems engineer, but the medical knowledge and experience of an unremarkable volunteer suddenly surfaced. He explained that he gained this knowledge while maintaining medical equipment, but it nevertheless drew the attention of the local security officials and, through them, of the General Las’ agent. After that, the issue of identifying the missing doctor was no longer a problem, and now Las knew exactly where to look for Silk, but it looked like the head of the Ministry of Defence security was too late after all.

A general toads’ offensive – a real one, not that invented by Shun’s journalists – struck the Empire’s peripheral systems entirely unexpectedly. The online clamor, extinguished by the assurances of the new acting commander-in-chief, has just subsided. There was even talk of a large-scale counterstrike by Admiral Dier’s staff, which again required a mobilization of all forces and reserves. But the toads were unwilling to play along with these plans. A simultaneous attack on seven star systems shocked the Empire’s fleet and army. Kappa Giyan had not yet been attacked, but Las was well aware that if this continued, its turn would come very soon.

“Major Tealc,” said the General into his communicator, “Get my ship ready for takeoff immediately. We’re going into the front zone, so provide an escort.”

“Three destroyers?” asked the Major.

“No,” Las hesitated for a second, “considering the situation, add an escort cruiser to them.”

It was a mess around the toads-attacked systems and nearby stars. The Empire’s best warships, which over the past month had been gradually concentrating in initial positions for Admiral Dier’s planned spectacular counteroffensive, were now being rushed to battle sites to plug more and more holes in the defenses. The hyperportal network could not cope with the enormous flow of ships and cargo, making battleships and aircraft carriers wait for hours for their turn to make a jump. Those hyperportals whose coordinates the toads’ scouts managed to determine before the strike were attacked and were either destroyed or severely damaged, and all standby mobile portals have already been engaged by the fleet in the most critical areas.

It was not for nothing that the toads had been relatively quiet for almost three months, allowing Dier and those behind him to weave their intra-imperial plots in relative comfort, but, unlike the imperial officials, they were not engaged in simulation of ceaseless activity, but were actually preparing a powerful strike.

Despite General Las’s high status, his small squadron found it very difficult to get into the Kappa Giyan system. The stationary hypergate emplaced in the system were jammed for days ahead with transports of urgent military supplies and the wounded rescued from the ruins of cities. Of the three backup portals placed one jump away from the system, two were severely damaged after toads’ attacks, and the third portal was completely unable to cope with the endless stream of ships seeking to enter or leave the system.

“Do you have any idea who you’re talking to, Colonel?” Las could hardly contain his emotions, looking at the image of the tired and frenzied officer in the uniform of the military transport service, “I’m the head of the Ministry of Defense Security Department! And you claim you can’t find a slot in the transfer schedule for my ships?!”

“I can, General,” answered the Colonel with utter hopelessness in his voice, “but not before 12 hours. I have shipments with «super urgent» status waiting in line for hours. And this includes stasis pods with women and children with complex injuries that can no longer be helped here. People die every minute on these transports without any help. What can I do? Make them wait any longer?”

Las gritted his teeth. He did not know how to explain to the Colonel, who was certainly right in his own way, that by rescuing the inhabitants of Kappa Giyan, he was jeopardizing the operation on the outcome of which the lives of billions of the Empire’s inhabitants might depend.

“All right, Colonel,” the General finally made up his mind, “There’s no need to change the schedule. Put my squadron in line to jump in 12 hours, all but one ship. My medium recon ship will fit in the hold of the evacuation transport going into the system. Give me the coordinates of the portal where they jump to you, and alert the commander of the next ship in line that he’s going to Kappa Giyan with the cargo.”

Las was taking a risk. He was well aware that his escort would not be able to join him for at least 15 hours. Anything could have happened in that time, from an invasion of the toads in the system to the appearance of heavily armed rivals from the Imperial security service. In either case, having warships behind him wouldn’t hurt the General, to say the least, but Las saw no other options.

* * *

The star whose planetary system we chose as the first test object of attack, or rather, reconnaissance-in-force, did not have its own name in the Federation catalog. It was a classic yellow dwarf, which received an unofficial name ‘Star G’ from one of the analysts, whether by the first letter G in the name of its spectral class, or maybe by the first letter in some other word, the author did not specify.

The beginning of the operation followed a pattern that we had already worked out many times. The escorted mobile transport ring segments arrived in the vicinity of the attacked system and docked. This time, given the scant information about the enemy, I decided to take precautions and chose a point to set up the portal two linear jumps away from the star.

15 Black Dragons, a hundred «Invisibles», 24 huge quarg aircraft carriers, and a light force of two dozen destroyers and an entire squadron of recon ships under the command of Rear Admiral Yoon Gao came through the hypergate and fell into a marching formation, preparing to accelerate to make two successive jumps to the system’s borders. This time I did not plan for long combat operations and capture of planets, so the supply transports and landing ships have remained on the bases.

We came out of the jump in the outer asteroid belt. The system met us with a complete lack of any reaction to the appearance of an impressive enemy fleet on its outskirts. And it was despite the fact that a few days ago our reconnaissance probes could not even get close to its borders. There was only one conclusion: they were waiting for us. It was unpleasant to realize this fact, but at least it became clear that we were not wrong about one thing: the toads did not have enough warships to directly confront our squadron in open space.

“Commander, Sir, the system is saturated with industrial and mining infrastructure,” the senior analyst reported looking at his screen, “but there is no transport fleet activity typical of such systems. There is a high probability that the enemy detected us at a distance of one jump from the system and had time to evacuate the shipyards and factories. It is also possible that we were discovered even earlier, but this means that the toads know the coordinates of the transport ring.”

“Pass the order to Commander Somov to undock the portal and jump immediately,” ordered I, knowing that we could not afford to lose the opportunity to quickly return to the Federation space. The transport ring, of course, still had its guard ships, but I didn’t want to take any chances anyway.

The tactical projection was gradually replenished with scan data, but compared to the usual picture seen when entering an enemy star system, the degree of detail of the picture left a lot to be desired. Our scanners were clearly countered by something very powerful, far superior to our scanning and electronic warfare systems.

“Rear Admiral Yoon Gao, what measures have been taken to scout enemy defense systems?”

“Unmanned probes have been sent to the three central planets, Commander, Sir. They are escorted at some distance by five medium recon ships and three Ghost-class destroyers, so the toads don’t try to shoot the probes down with some little thing like patrol corvettes. With their help, they used to prevent us from even approaching the boundaries of the system.”

“The Ghosts don’t have enough firepower, Rear Admiral. Even an attack by two or three enemy corvettes could be a problem for them.”

“There’s no counteraction so far, Fleet Admiral, Sir," objected Yoon Gao, "and sending Black Dragons to cover the probes…”

“I agree," I nodded, "it’s a completely unnecessary risk.”

Meanwhile, the picture was beginning to become clearer. As the distance to the enemy decreased, the probe scanners began transmitting more and more detailed information to the squadron ships.

“How many of them are there…” said Admiral Fulton in amazement as the tactical projection displayed the largest sites of the orbital defense of the fourth planet.

I understood the Admiral well. This was really the first time we saw anything like this. Even Earth was protected by only 15 orbital fortresses, and it was thought that this number was even excessive. There was something unimaginable going on here. A dense network of hundreds of large marks surrounded the planet in a sphere. It was not yet possible to examine these sites in detail, but their size unambiguously indicated that they were not analogues of relatively weak rocket and artillery monitors, with which we dealt at Luyten-5, but full-fledged orbital fortresses.

“Rear Admiral, continue reconnaissance of the fourth planet’s defense system, and assign several groups to search for a hyperportal,” I ordered Yoon Gao, “According to the prisoners’ statements, it should be in this system, and somewhere near the boundaries of the star’s zone of influence, but so far our scanners don’t see it.”

“Doin’ it,” Yoon nodded and disappeared from the channel, switching to giving orders to his subordinates.

I did not like what I saw. I had no doubt that my squadron was no match against the network of orbital fortresses of the toads, but to turn around and fly away would be unforgivably stupid. In order to come back here later for a real assault, we needed to understand what the enemy’s defenses were capable of. Based on what we saw in the battle of the Delta Trianguli, the range of our drone torpedoes was longer than that of the toads’ guns, but we’ve never dealt with their orbital fortresses before, so I couldn’t say anything with certainty.

The destroyers accompanying the reconnaissance probes approached the orbital fortresses within torpedo launching distance. They had no torpedo weapons on board, but the enemy could not know that, and I hoped that if the toads had something more long-range than the main batteries of their battleships, they would use it. However, our provocation was not successful, the fortresses remained silent.

“«Invisibles» One through 30, prepare to accelerate towards the fourth planet. Commander Klitch,” I addressed to the squadron commander of the quargs, who had miraculously survived in the melted wreckage of his flagship at the Battle of Delta Trianguli, “Assign five of your aircraft carriers to join up with the «Invisibles».”

“Doin’ it.”

“Seven destroyers from the first division and battleship Denver, escort the drone torpedo carriers to the attack line and cover their retreat after the salvo. The squadron’s task is a torpedo strike on three enemy orbital fortresses – the 75th through the 77th.”

The fleet split up. The main force remained behind the orbit of the sixth planet, without entering the star’s zone of influence, and one Black Dragon and seven destroyers began approaching the toads’ planet, escorting the ‘Invisibles’ and aircraft carriers. The enemy was bound to react to such a threat, of that I had no doubt.

We have never been able to see in detail what the orbital fortresses of the toads are. Even at maximum proximity to them, probe scanners gave only a fuzzy, blurry picture. But at least we could see the fortresses, and the surface of the planet was not scanned in any way.