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Jumpspace at T minus 22.4 years
Iceman and his brothers knew from Thor that the asteroid attack happened somewhere between 35 and 40 years prior to Dreadnought’s attempt at contacting Earth’s humans. The only way to pin down the exact date was to try to find the right distance from Earth where the ship could catch transmissions sent during or in the days leading up to the asteroid strike. That distance in light years would give them the information they needed.
Dreadnought, with the freighter still attached, emerged from Jumpspace 17.5 light years from Earth and pointed her receivers in that direction. Silence. With the ship travelling through normal space in the direction of Earth, it was easy for Iceman to make the ship take a series of short micro-jumps in quick succession. Each micro-jump was exactly 250 light hours closer. After 55 micro-jumps, the ship picked up the first sign of intelligent life in the Solar system. The signal was so weak and distorted that none of the AIs could make out what it was saying, but it was clearly of artificial origin. That meant that someone was still alive in the Solar system, although not necessarily on Earth, when the signal had been sent.
The two ships time-jumped back so that they would pick up signals that had been transmitted two weeks before the other signal had been sent. Iceman wanted to monitor as much radio traffic as possible before the asteroid hit. He was hoping that someone would have broadcast the asteroid’s position and trajectory prior to impact so that the AIs could back track it and get some idea of when and where the Trell had started to divert it.
From 4.2 light years away, the ship was picking up a lot of EM emissions. Thousands of frequencies were recorded and analyzed. The broadcasts were completely normal until 24 hours before impact. That was when the general public was informed of the impending disaster and urged to seek shelter. The AIs picked up general information about where the asteroid was expected to hit and what general area of sky it was approaching from, but that wasn’t accurate enough to be of any practical use. They continued to listen as the asteroid, which had given birth to several smaller chunks due to attempts to break it up with nuclear missiles, hit the Earth. Over the next 24 hours almost all radio sources that had been clearly identified as originating from the Earth ceased transmitting. As time went on, more and more radio sources went silent, and no useful data on the asteroid’s trajectory were received. Iceman finally called a halt and conferred with his brothers.
Listening from a distance wasn’t going to generate the data they needed. A consensus was reached that in order to figure out when and where to intervene, the AIs had to jump back to Earth to monitor the asteroid’s path in the days and maybe even weeks leading up to the strike. That would be a tricky operation. Humans didn’t yet have the jump drive, but they did have the necessary maneuvering engine technology to enable spacecraft to move about within the solar system. The AIs had to try to prevent Dreadnought from being detected. Because of the distances involved between the asteroid belt and Earth’s orbit, any asteroid falling sunward would need months to reach Earth’s orbit. That allowed Dreadnought and the attached freighter to time-jump back to a point three months before the impact. Dreadnought and the freighter carefully moved to a point that was directly above Earth’s North Pole, at a distance that was equal to Jupiter’s distance from the sun. Iceman sent out recon drones to take up station along a very wide path that the asteroid was likely to follow on its way sunward. By detecting it early and monitoring its trajectory carefully, it was hoped that they would be able to calculate exactly where and when the asteroid had left the Asteroid Belt. That point would be the best place to try to intercept the Trell.
It was almost two weeks before the drones detected the asteroid. Careful tracking showed that the acceleration of the 144 kilometers long rock was all due to the Sun’s gravitational pull. That meant that diverting it from its current trajectory was no longer possible. It was just too massive to push aside. The only way to neutralize it here and now was to blast it into much smaller pieces, most of which would be blown off the collision path. Doing that would be noticed, though, creating a mystery that did not exist in the previous timeline. That mystery could be tolerated. But if Dreadnought didn’t destroy the Trell craft that diverted it, the Trell just might try again with another asteroid, and if necessary another after that, and so on. How long would it take for the humans to begin investigating a series of exploding asteroids, and possibly detect Dreadnought? The cleanest way to fix this timeline would be to ambush the Trell craft before it diverted the asteroid from its normal path.
When nothing more could be gleaned from tracking the asteroid’s path, Iceman recalled all the recon drones in preparation for another time-jump. This time-jump would give the AIs lots of room to maneuver. Now that they knew what the asteroid looked like, the plan was for the two ships to jump back another full nine months, find that particular asteroid and lurk, hidden nearby, until the Trell craft showed up. They would only get one crack at this strategy. If it failed, they couldn’t try again without risking matrix collapse.
With the time-jump now out of the way, Dreadnought and the freighter moved in a wide curve from their polar position into the asteroid belt. The freighter followed in Dreadnought’s wake as the bigger ship pushed aside smaller rocks. Recon drones flew ahead searching for the right asteroid. Its size made the hunt easier.
Eventually the drones found it. Now the drones made a detailed survey of all the rocks that were large enough for Dreadnought and the Freighter to hide behind. Eighty-nine rocks were identified that fit that criteria within a fifty thousand kilometers radius. Iceman parked Dreadnought and the freighter behind one of the larger ones, while all 320 fighters armed with the Mark 10 kinetic energy missiles spread out among 109 smaller asteroids. With everyone in their designated positions, there was nothing left to do but wait.
The Trell craft arrived 987 hours later. It was relatively small, as would be expected of something that was sent back by the Trell time tunnel, but it was clear from the zoomed in optical images and the very high deceleration rate that the drone had a lot of power for its size. It approached the target asteroid very slowly as it surveyed the asteroid dimensions with a low-powered laser which the recon drones and Dreadnought could see hitting the rock. It was calculating the asteroid’s center of gravity so that it could push against the right spot. Iceman didn’t wait to see what it did next. Dreadnought had a clear line-of-sight to the target. She fired four gamma-ray laser turrets at the enemy drone and vaporized most of it, leaving the rest a half-molten wreck. Iceman ordered all fighters to hold their positions. This battle was not over. Two Trell warships were unaccounted for, and he was certain they would show up here to ensure that the asteroid strike did take place. The AIs didn’t have to wait long.
Eight seconds after the destruction of the enemy drone, two ships emerged from Jumpspace only a few hundred kilometers from where the enemy drone had been. Gunslinger was in charge of Dreadnought’s weapon turrets, and he immediately aimed the modified GLB devices at both enemy ships in order to generate the gravity shields. At first the enemy ships merely scanned their surroundings with radar and lidar, but they quickly zeroed in on some of the fighters and fired their deadly energy weapons at them. Iceman’s fighters were already firing back with their kinetic energy missiles. Most of the missiles missed, but a few hit. The energy released by the impacts was bright enough to be detected, which made subsequent missile volleys that much more accurate. The enemy ships must have had a lot of armor too, because for several long seconds there was no apparent slackening of their energy beam fire.
Dreadnought had not yet fired its lasers, and because the black hull was up against a part of an asteroid that was in shadow, the enemy ships hadn’t seen it yet. Iceman knew it was only a matter of time before the enemy radar detected the ship. He ordered Gunslinger to program the few Mark 9s that Dreadnought had positioned in her launch tubes and were therefore ready to fire. Sixteen Mark 9s launched, accelerating at maximum speed for almost two seconds. Ten were caught by energy beams before they could micro-jump. The other six missed their targets altogether. It took less than a tenth of a second for the enemy to plot the detected drones back to Dreadnought’s position. Iceman expected the ship to be hit by energy beams, but once again the enemy ships chose to attempt to cripple Dreadnought by using their nuclear-tipped missiles. This time it was Dreadnought’s turn to use her lasers to intercept the missiles that were now suddenly re-emerging into normal space due to hitting the gravity shields. For the next 3.8 seconds, the battle continued the same way. The fighters fired the rest of the KE missiles, while the enemy ships fired their energy weapons at the fighters and their fission missiles at Dreadnought, which was intercepting 98% of them. The 2% that got through the anti-missile fire did not penetrate Dreadnought’s armor.
At almost the exact same moment in time, one of the enemy ships stopped firing, suddenly becoming a lot more visible, and the remaining fighters ran out of KE missiles. Iceman made the determination that one enemy ship had been effectively knocked out of the fight. That still left one other, and now that it was no longer being fired upon by KE missiles from the fighters, it could afford to shift its energy weapons to Dreadnought.
Iceman was faced with a dilemma. The gravity shields were not only forcing the enemy’s missiles to drop back into normal space, but, since they were directly in between both ships, they were also attenuating the energy density of both the enemy’s beam weapons, as well as Dreadnought’s gamma-ray lasers. Since the enemy’s energy beam weapons were so much more powerful to begin with, the net result was that Dreadnought was still in danger of being crippled by the constant energy beam barrage. Its own lasers were much less effective against the enemy armor and would take a lot longer to penetrate it. Titan, in command of the fighters, offered to order his fighters to ram the remaining enemy ship, but Iceman told him ‘no’. At low speeds, a ramming fighter would do only minor damage, and Iceman wasn’t prepared to lose hundreds of his AI brothers that way. No, there was only one thing left to do, and he decided to do it.
Dreadnought pulled away from its asteroid cover and accelerated at maximum straight for the enemy ship. Being fired on by the enemy beam weapon made pinpointing the attacking ship’s exact position possible. As soon as Dreadnought was lined up correctly, Iceman sent his final orders to Titan and then micro-jumped the ship so that it emerged back into normal space less than 100 meters from the enemy ship’s hull. Dreadnought didn’t have a lot of speed, but it did have a lot of mass, and that was enough to cave in the entire side of the enemy ship, and send out an expanding cloud of debris in all directions. But mass works both ways, and Dreadnought was also devastated. It was obvious to Titan and the others that none of the ship’s AIs would have survived the impact.
Both enemy ships were out of action, but one was still more or less intact and could potentially repair itself enough to be a threat again. Titan ordered one squadron back to the freighter to be reloaded. The freighter carried a limited number of the bulky Mark 9 drones. One was enough to smash the intact enemy ship into a safe wreck. The rest of the Mark 9s would be used against the Trell home world as per Iceman’s final orders. Unfortunately they didn’t have enough to also blast both enemy derelicts into tiny pieces. The wrecked hulks would have to be left here. In the unlikely event that the humans discovered them before contact with TerraB was made, it would be another mystery with hopefully little impact on the restored timeline. The AIs would just have to accept that risk. With the second enemy ship now smashed by the Mark 9 beyond any hope of repairing itself, Titan ordered the squadron armed with the remaining Mark 9s to head for the Trell home system. The rest of the fighters and the freighter were ordered to head to Site B in order to begin the work of building up the AI-controlled fighter fleet that would be needed in the future.
The attack on the Trell home world was simple in concept and impossible to defend against with the technology the defenders had. Each fighter had been given precise instructions, and it therefore wasn’t necessary to reform the squadron when they arrived at the outer edge of the target star system. Eight Mark 9 drones were programmed to accelerate up to 61.8% of the speed of light. They then micro-jumped to the edge of the Trell home world’s gravity zone and plunged into the zone on a bearing that brought each drone to the very edge of the planet’s atmosphere. All eight drones arrived spaced so that at least two drones were above each major land mass, and all eight detonated at precisely the same time. Each detonation generated a powerful electro-magnetic pulse that shorted out electrical systems and electronic devices within a radius of over a thousand kilometers. As expected, the Trell back in this time period were not nearly advanced enough to be able to intercept the drones. In an instant they went from roughly the equivalent of early 21st Century Earth back to mid-19th Century Earth. Even if they somehow did receive technological data from the future, they’d be incapable of exploiting it for a long time. The fighters stayed in the system long enough to confirm that 99% of radio and radar sources on the planet had gone silent, before heading back to Site B.
The Retro War was over.
