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.
