Chapter Seven: New Discoveries (1590-1591)The Office of Naval Intelligence report on Second Manticore contained nothing but speculation. Why had the enemy sallied forth and given up their strong defensive position? Did they panic? Did they assume the Star Kingdom left its terminus unguarded? Was it possible for humans to comprehend the workings of an alien mind? The only real conclusion it drew was obvious. The creatures didn’t know about Commodore Dunne’s fleet, and its massed firepower overwhelmed them. A decisive, if puzzling, victory for the Royal Manticoran Navy.
On November 30th 1590, HMS Akheron detected multiple gravitic signatures approaching the Hennesy terminus from Aral. This new alien group appeared identical to the one destroyed in Manticore: thirty Brisbanes, eleven Adelaides and four Melbournes. Facing them was Commander His Royal Highness Michael Winton’s force of six light cruisers, three destroyers and two frigates. The Manticoran ships maintained tight emissions control, and the enemy appeared oblivious to their presence.
At eight million kilometers, HMS Donnelly lit up her active sensors, and her consorts launched ninety-four missiles before accelerating away on a perpendicular heading. The aliens reacted by first attempting to flee, then milling about in confusion after the warheads detonated in their midst. The Manticorans held the range open for the next forty minutes, emptying their magazines of three hundred and eighty-eight Mark 4 Light Missiles.
It wasn’t enough. Fifteen Brisbane type creatures survived the onslaught. All bore terrible wounds, but most appeared combat capable.
To finish the job, HMS Casey led the Mercury-class destroyers in a valiant charge. Together, they destroyed the remaining aliens, but the light cruiser took significant damage in the exchange. She lost an impeller, multiple weapon mounts, and fifty-four members of her crew. Fortunately, she could still limp back to space dock.
This battle left the Hennesy Defense Force severely under strength. Down to only four ships with energy armaments and without a single missile among them. But the RMN refused to fall back from its hard won beachhead unless it had no choice. None of the crews slept easy during the two weeks it took the collier RMAS Apollo to arrive with reloads.
Even the Lords hesitated to call Crown Prince Michael to personally account for his “excessive ordnance expenditures.” Anyway, he was off in Hennesy, while the First Space Lord and Defense Minister were both available and more politically expedient punching bags. The hearings lasted for days and the continued poor performance of the Mark 4 Light Missile became a major sticking point for both sides.
Summervale argued that if Parliament wanted the Navy to use fewer missiles, it should give them more effective ones. The proposed Mark 7 Light Missile offered a fifty percent improvement in hit rate against the fast moving alien targets. This sounded much better in BuShips’ slide deck than in reality, a point raised by several Lords who noted their performance would go from abysmal to merely bad. They questioned whether the money should instead be spent refitting all the Navy’s missile ships with energy weapons. After all, laser beams were free and had a proven track record.
Defense Minister New Dijon responded with a passionate speech about the inherent value of human lives. Replacing missiles was far cheaper than replacing the brave men and women of the RMN. This appealed to her Liberal and Progressive colleagues, who proposed and passed a bill to develop the needed ordnance. Privately, the Conservatives questioned her math skills. The outrageous price tag attached to new missiles could put a lot of peasants through Casey-Rosewood’s bootcamp. Saying that out loud, however, would be political suicide in the Commons.
Most of the Star Kingdom’s media accepted the government narrative on the threat posed by the alien invaders. In the aftermath of the two battles, they ran stories on the mysterious “Swarm” and the brave naval officers who opposed them. However, as the first half of 1591 passed without further attacks, a contrarian viewpoint reemerged, questioning whether the creatures were hostile or even sentient.
A group of pundits got their hands on several heavily redacted ONI reports pushing the ‘migratory animal’ theory. They noted the RMN had fired first in every encounter and accused the Navy of provoking the docile space whales by using them for target practice. Particularly damning was Commodore Dunne’s own Parliamentary testimony in which he referred to the poor things as “lemmings.” Few citizens gave this any credence, as two hundred human deaths were too fresh in the public consciousness, but it resonated with a vocal segment of the Liberal base who pressured the government to end the senseless slaughter.
With military usage down, more fuel was available for the cargo fleet. It transported several loads of construction factories to Medusa to enable on-site manufacturing of infrastructure and free up freight capacity for more important industry. This also meant the colony ships could resume shipping settlers.
Meanwhile, the Vega-class bulk freighters busied themselves with replacing the automated mines on Gryphon’s moon Egg with manned ones. The existing equipment was then hauled to the junction for transshipment to the Gallicite rich dwarf planet Basilisk VI. At the moment, that world’s orbit placed it only four days from the Basilisk-Manticore terminus, making it ideal for the purpose.
Drewson Cartel Yard #1 received a contract to build the experimental tug ship Sisyphus, which began construction from prefabricated parts in February. The firm that made them retooled to produce the Admiralty’s new large wormhole transit devices for installation in HMS Swiftsure and HMS Victory.
Sphinx’s small craft factories produced a trial run of four Marathon-class dispatch boats. The Admiralty sent one to each of Medusa, Chimera, Hennesy, and Manticore. For now, they would only carry priority military and government messages. Civilian mail and packages would continue to be delivered by the intermittent freighter traffic.
In March, the Royal Manticoran Marine Corps completed training four Geosurvey Companies. It deployed two to Sphinx and kept the others at Gryphon. The Kingdom had high hopes of finding additional minerals on both worlds. Unfortunately, the ground survey of Sphinx turned up nothing. The team on Gryphon found an unknown deposit of eleven million tons of Mercassium with good accessibility. Manticore’s existing deposits were poor, so this would be beneficial in the long term. After this, the Gryphon team relocated to Basilisk.
Midshipwoman Rebeka Eremenko reported to the Royal Naval Academy in May to begin a rigorous, accelerated officer training program. Because of her previous rating and experience, BuPers put her in the Engineering Track. She had hoped for Tactical, as that was the more likely path to eventual command, but her first weeks dashed those daydreams. The RMN didn’t have many warships, and it surely wasn’t planning to give one to the likes of her.
Some people, even instructors, thought she walked on water. Others seemed scandalized by breathing the same air as a yeoman’s daughter from the Gryphon Highlands. She couldn’t decide which reaction was worse. But she figured if another 20-year-old noble brat turned up his nose when she entered a room, she might break it, and that would ruin everything, promised commission or no. So, she kept her head down, concentrated on her studies, and limited social interactions as much as possible.
In June, the new survey cruisers HMS Traveler and HMS Wanderer passed their acceptance trials. At the moment, Survey Squadron 1 was in Hancock beyond Trevor’s Star, while the rest of the ships were undergoing overhaul or on long-term military deployments. The Admiralty designated the fresh ships Survey Squadron 2 and sent them to Minorca, an unsurveyed system in the Matapan chain.
HMS Wanderer won a friendly competition between their crews by finding the Squadron's first wormhole. Its terminus lay only a few million kilometers from her present position, so she called HMS Amphitrite to perform an immediate probe. The frigate transited into a two planet system with a G2 primary. The outermost world was a Cold Desert with a nitrogen oxygen atmosphere and minimal hydrosphere. It was the most habitable planet discovered to date.
The new government had promoted Vice Admiral Sorbanne to Second Space Lord during its reshuffling of the Admiralty. Although this took him out of Survey Command, they still reported to him through the Bureau of Planning, and the aftermath of the Wayfarer Incident was fresh on everyone’s minds. Unwilling to risk her ship or career, Lieutenant Commander Ernestine Alexander, niece to the current Earl White Haven, sent Amphitrite on ahead to investigate.
On July 4th, the frigate detected a small population signature including 3800 tons of ground forces. With great trepidation, she crept into orbit and her crew breathed a collective sigh of relief when no shots came. They expected pirates or smugglers, but found roughly two thousand bipedal lizard-like aliens in a settlement on the planet’s southern continent. It appeared to be a military force with modern, high-tech weaponry. However, the Manticoran sensors saw no signs of space flight capability and it was unclear how the soldiers had gotten here.
While HMS Amphitrite attempted to communicate with the oblivious natives, HMS Wanderer surveyed the planets. The habitable world held enormous concentrations of Neutronium, Boronide and Corundium, and was also a good candidate for ground survey. Perhaps the alien troops were staking a claim to the minerals? This didn’t seem likely as their settlement was far from the best deposits.
HMS Wanderer popped back into Minorca just long enough for Lieutenant Commander Alexander to send HMS Traveler scurrying home with her report. Then returned to the inhabited system, which she had named Hyperion, to continue communication attempts and search for wormholes. It was imperative for the Star Kingdom to determine where these new aliens originated as soon as possible.
Oblivious to the excitement in Minorca, the Admiralty organized a powerful reconnaissance mission to Hennesy. The new transit capable battlecruiser HMS Swiftsure, escorted by four heavy cruisers, would go looking for the unusually quiet Swarm. If it found nothing, they would proceed to the Aral terminus, investigate it with a wormhole probe and, at Commodore Dunne’s discretion, search that system as well.
The probe detected a powerful Swarm force on the Aral side of the wormhole. It included four heavy cruiser sized aliens of an unknown type designated Sydney, four light cruiser sized Hobarts, nineteen of the more common LAC-sized creatures and seven Perths. The latter had not been seen since Wayfarer’s sensor data. ONI speculated they might belong to the mysterious boarders, although the relationship between those humanoid beings and the large space going ones was still unclear.
The enemy fleet displaced just under 130k tons, slightly more than the reconnaissance squadron. The RMN had more than enough firepower to sweep them aside. Still, several factors made an assault infeasible. First, the Kingdom didn't have enough fuel to send such a large force. Second, there was a non-zero risk of losing both wormhole transit devices and stranding the heavy warships in a remote alien-controlled system. Third, a full-blown invasion against the Swarm’s home would outrage a small portion of the population and likely cause protests just in time for the Commons elections.
Any such operation would have to wait.
The Kingdom’s researchers finished several high-profile projects this year including: Mark 7 Light Missiles, Mark 8 Heavy Missiles, Ordnance Production 12 BP, Planetary Sensor Strength 300, Sorium Harvesters and Xenoarchaeology Equipment.
Now that the long awaited Sorium Harvesters were available, civilian industry constructed two massive refinery platforms, each containing a hundred harvesting modules. RMAS Sisyphus towed them out to the gas giant Draco. Between them, the stations’ annual production was over 2/3rds the entire output of the planet Manticore, which should go far towards easing the fuel crisis.
20 December 1591“Ma’am,” the young woman at HMS Wanderer’s communications station said into the silence of her bridge. “We’re receiving a tight beam transmission from directly ahead. They’re broadcasting in the clear.”
Lieutenant Commander Ernestine Alexander clamped down the sudden surge of adrenaline and tried to keep her voice steady. “Put it on my display. And signal Amphitrite.”
Were they about to meet the mobile forces of the lizard-like aliens on Hyperion II?
No. The figure who appeared was a human man in his early thirties with clear Old Earth Chinese ancestry. He wore a sharply tailored white uniform with red piping and a tall peaked cap.
“
Guten Tag,” he said, sending her confusion into the stratosphere. Then, he switched to English with a heavy German accent. “Manticoran light cruiser, I am
Korvettenkapitän Lizhu Fiedler of His Imperial Majesty’s Survey Ship Führung-2. Please forgive our intrusion. My vessel is unarmed. We are on a peaceful exploration mission and just arrived here through a wormhole. If you tell us where we are—for my report—we will leave immediately.”
Andermani. He had to be. And the main plot showed no contacts anywhere. “Is this a bi-directional link? Put me on.”
“Yes ma’am. Hot mic.”
“
Korvettenkapitän,” she only stumbled a little over the word. “I am Lieutenant Commander Alexander of Her Majesty’s Ship Wanderer. You’ve arrived in the neutral system of Hyperion.” She mentally counted the seconds until she saw him relax just a little. Twenty! That meant his ship was right on top of her command. But where? Muting the audio, she said, “Active sensors.”
If the Andermani was lying about his vessel being unarmed, he might take exception to the aggressive action and blow her out of space. Still, this was the first contact between Manticoran and Andermani vessels in a decade. Every scrap of information she could glean on their capabilities would be valuable.
“There it is!” Chief Johnson said from the sensor station. “One ship at 3 million kilometers. Computer reads it as four thousand tons.”
Which might still be a battlecruiser given what ONI suspected of these people’s stealth tech. “Actives off.”
The man on her display held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Really, Commander. There is no need for hostility. We are only mapping wormholes.”
Time to toss the dice. She unmuted the microphone. “As are we,
Korvettenkapitän. And I would love to see yours.”