by James Rosone
They officially had a foothold in the station; now they were going to expand their proverbial beachhead and see if they could seize the station and everything within it.
Now that the fighting had moved beyond the room, a handful of medics rushed in and went to work treating the wounded RASs and Special Forces soldiers. They’d do their best to stabilize the wounded, then get them back to the hangar so they could be brought back to the Midway or the Tripoli for further triage. The medical ships would only jump into the area after the battlespace was clear of enemy ships.
While the medics were tending to the wounded, one of the technical exploitation soldiers walked up to Royce. “Excuse me, Captain Royce?” the man asked, as if unsure he’d found the right officer.
“Yes, I’m Captain Royce,” he told the geeky tech. “What can I help you with?”
“Sir, you issued a kill switch order to all the C100s a little while back. Can you tell me what happened?” the technician asked. “Perhaps there’s something I can do to help solve the problem.”
Royce resisted the urge to be annoyed at being interrupted by one of the exploitation techs, realizing this guy might actually be able to help him. “Sure, I can tell you what happened. I’m synced in with all the C100s; this allows me as the commander to direct them to attack specific targets or override something their AI is telling them to attack. The AI is good, but sometimes it doesn’t anticipate what’s about to happen, and that’s where I come in. When our C100s started charging the Orbots, something happened. I received a message telling me there was some sort of system failure. In a fraction of a second, they dropped to the ground like hunks of useless metal.”
Royce now motioned for them to walk and talk as they headed to the lab, which was the real reason this tech was here. “One of my platoon sergeants said something about the Orbots possibly hacking them and turning them off. I don’t know why, but in that instant, I thought if the Orbots could hack into their OS and turn them off, they might be able to also turn them against us. I couldn’t take that chance, so I issued a kill order to all the C100s on the station and the ones on the transport that just docked. I know you’re here to exploit the lab, and that’s critically important. But do you think you might be able to do a system check on the C100s and determine if the Orbots had infiltrated their OS?”
The tech was silent for a moment as they approached the lab. Finally, he turned back to Royce. “You’re right, Captain. We need to focus on the lab first. Once that’s completed, then, yes, I think we should check the C100s. Let’s separate the ones that turned off from the others. If they hacked them, they’d have hacked that group first. We’ll need to see if they were able to get through our firewall. If they did, that could be a problem. It’s beyond my technical ability, but I’m sure someone from Walburg Industries would be able to help us figure it out.”
Chapter Twelve
Battle Over Rass
RNS George Washington
“Damage report!” barked Captain McKee.
“Primary guns one through six on the port side are still down. Primaries eight, nine, and twelve are still down on the starboard side. We’re still sitting at roughly fifty percent of our secondary turrets down on both sides. One-third of our torpedo launchers are down as well,” the commander in charge of the damage control party said.
“Weps, how many missiles do we have left?” McKee asked, starting to get anxious as more of her weapon systems were going down and the battle was still raging.
“We’ve expended forty-percent of our ship-to-ship missiles,” Lieutenant Commander Cory LaFine shouted back to be heard over the various alarms, warnings, and other noise blaring on the bridge. “I still recommend we empty the magazines on the remaining Zodark and Orbot ships while the launchers are operational.”
Her weapons officer had been doing a superb job during the battle, identifying high-value ships they should engage first over others. The battlegroup had prioritized these and then focused all their firepower on a single ship at a time. He’d also been pushing for them to expend all of their nuclear warheads and missiles on the remaining ships. McKee was hesitant. She was concerned about enemy reinforcements showing up and not having missiles to deal with them.
McKee turned to her tactical section. “Commander Arnold, how many enemy ships are left and how many Prim and Republic warships are still in fighting shape?”
It took Arnold a moment to get the info she was asking for. “We have two functional battleships, three battlecruisers, twelve frigates, and ourselves. The Prims have five battleships, twelve cruisers, and fourteen frigates. They're in better shape than we are.”
“How many enemy ships are still left?” asked McKee.
“There are two Orbot battleships and one cruiser. They still have that one support ship further away, but frankly, we have no idea what that thing really is or what it does,” Commander Arnold explained, putting his hands up a bit as if surrendering. “It’s not participating in the battle. As to the Zodarks, they have two carriers left, six battleships, a lone star destroyer, and eight cruisers. We’ve been popping their cruisers quickly as they are just easier to take down.”
Captain McKee’s battlegroup had fallen back to let the Primord ships take the brunt of the fighting. Admiral Stavanger had directed her to pull her forces back so they could work on getting their ship damage under control. He kept reminding her that space battles take a bit of time to play out. It wasn’t a sprint—it was a marathon to keep your ships alive as long as possible.
“Damage control, how long until we’ll have more of our primary and secondary turrets back online?” McKee asked next.
Commander Dieter Bonhauf turned to face her. “We’ll have at least two of the starboard turrets fixed in two or three hours. A couple of the secondary turrets on the port side will be ready in an hour. The remaining guns are going to take a day or more.”
Damn, this isn’t good, McKee realized. We’re down half our primary and secondary weapons. They needed to get back into the fight. Admiral Halsey was still waiting with the transports to bring the landing force in. McKee’s mind raced as she considered what to do next. They needed to clear the path for the infantry, and they needed to do it now.
McKee faced her bridge crew. “OK, here’s the plan. We’ll move the fleet back towards the battle. Our battlegroup will maneuver around the edge of the enemy fleet to get in position to attack those Orbot ships. Lieutenant Commander LaFine, when you believe we’re in the optimal range to attack those Orbot battleships, fire our Starburst missiles. Do your best to blind their sensors. While that’s happening, fire twenty of our ghost missiles at them. Once they deploy their decoys, hit them with twenty of our nukes each. Let’s take them out before they tear our Prim allies apart.”
With their new orders in hand, the crew went to work getting the ship spun up and ready to enter the gauntlet once again. The other ships in the battlegroup would begin to form a battle line both above and below the GW to maximize the volume of fire directed at the enemy battleships.
It took some time, but the ships finally lined up to reenter the battle. The Primord ships were in the process of leaving the battlespace to reform and reengage. Judging by the movement of the Zodark ships, they were in the process of doing the same while the Orbot ships positioned themselves to meet the human fleet.
The George Washington led the way for the Republic. At one million kilometers, the Orbot battleships attempted to lock onto them as their smaller cruisers raced toward them to get in a better attack position.
“EWO, jam their ships as best you can,” Commander Arnold called out. “Weps, have our SW missiles primed and ready to go. We have a pretty full stock of them again—make sure you have a solid screen going.”
When John Arnold had been promoted to commander a year earlier, he’d moved from being the ship’s operations department chief to the tactical department chief. He’d then assumed the role of XO when their previous one had been killed during the Intus invasio
n.
McKee gave Arnold a slight smile and nod to let him know he was doing a good job. She liked John; he was a smart, capable officer. He was also well liked by the crew, but that probably had more to do with the weekly poker tournaments he’d organized when they weren’t conducting military operations.
“They’re jammed, at least for the moment,” said their EWO, Lieutenant Commander Robinson. “Once we cross the three hundred and fifty thousand mark, they’ll be able to burn through it.”
Captain McKee bit her lip as they waited. The group of Orbot cruisers had sped well ahead of the battleships. A few moments later, her EWO announced, “They’re approaching three hundred and sixty kilometers. A little closer and they’ll burn through our electronic wizardry.”
“Lieutenant LaFine, order the primary and secondary turrets to engage the cruisers. Let’s throw a wall of slugs at them. A few are bound to hit,” McKee ordered. She wanted to start thinning the enemy fleet before they could get in range and go after her turrets.
Lieutenant Cory LaFine should have been a commander by now. He was hands-down one of the best weapons officers in the Republic—at least as far as Admiral Hunt and Captain McKee were concerned. However, when he’d been selected for Lieutenant Commander, he’d ended up getting in some trouble; LaFine had been caught banging the wife of a master chief. Fraternization between officers and enlisted was still highly frowned upon—fraternizing with the spouse of an enlisted person’s wife, well, that usually got you kicked out of the military.
There had been a lot of pressure on Admiral Hunt, and then later Captain McKee, to drum him out of the service. But with the war heating up, they had prevailed on the board to keep him in uniform. LaFine would be assigned to the GW for the foreseeable future, where he could be “watched.” He’d had to forgo his new promotion and start over with a new time in grade, meaning he had to stay a lieutenant another three to five years before a review board might select him for promotion. Depending on who was on the review board, he might get a pass, but if the jaded master chief had anything to do about it, he’d hound any officer on that board until they passed LaFine over again.
LaFine turned slightly as he replied, “On it, Captain. Do you want me to hit them with some of our regular Havoc and nuke missiles? I’ll keep our new stuff a surprise for the battleships.”
She smiled. “Yeah, that sounds like a good plan, Lieutenant. Do it.”
The ship vibrated slightly as the large primary and secondary turrets fired volley after volley at the enemy.
The cruisers took evasive maneuvers once they saw the GW fire its weapons. The Orbots were learning quickly that they couldn’t take a lot of hits from them.
The cruisers had now closed in to under three hundred thousand kilometers—close enough to burn through the GW’s electronic jamming signal. They fired their masers at the human ship. Unlike the Zodarks, who relied on high-powered lasers, the Orbots used some sort of highly advanced maser weapon, utilizing microwave technology.
“Firing countermeasures now!” Lieutenant LaFine yelled out when they saw them fire.
Dozens of the small SW rockets shot out from the ship; when they’d traveled twenty-five thousand kilometers, they detonated a large, dense cloud of fine sand-and-water mixture. These cloud walls generated a barrier between the ship and the incoming lasers or masers; while they still tended to burn through it, their force was greatly reduced or dispersed by the time the beam hit the GW.
Still, the ship shook hard from the hit. Not as hard as when an Orbot battleship hit them, but hard enough that they felt it.
McKee caught sight of the monitor as one of the enemy cruisers flew into a barrage of sixty-inch slugs all across the front and middle section of the vessel. It drifted and lost control as a series of secondary explosions rocked it. Moments later, the cruiser exploded spectacularly.
The battleships and battlecruisers of her little fleet sent a wall of slugs at the remaining Orbot cruisers. They crumpled quickly under the intense barrage. It was unlike anything McKee had ever seen. She made a mental note to review the ship formations afterward, pending they lived of course. If this new tactic worked, they might have found a new way to take on these more advanced ships. In either case, they pulverized the Orbot cruisers and turned their focus to the remaining battleships—the tough nuts.
“I’m firing the plasma cannon now!” LaFine shouted.
The heavy hitters of the Orbot fleet were still five hundred thousand kilometers out: close enough to burn through the GW’s electronic warfare tools, and just far enough away to maneuver out of the human fleets’ magrail guns.
The monitors on the GW whited out briefly from the plasma cannon firing. After the screen readjusted, they watched the white ball of plasma energy head right for the lead Orbot ship as it tried to make some radical maneuvers to get out of the way. The ship was just too big, and the plasma shot moved too fast—close to three hundred thousand kilometers per second, a full three times the speed of their magrails.
When the shot hit the enemy vessel, it punched a huge hole in it, blowing debris out from the other end. That didn’t always happen when shooting at an Orbot battleship. They must have found a soft spot for it to have done that amount of damage.
“Brace for impact!” Commander Bonhauf called out.
The GW shook hard from the maser hit. It was one of those types of jarring hits that made the fillings in your teeth hurt.
“Firing missiles now,” McKee’s weapons officer exclaimed.
Missile after missile fired from their various magazines. McKee had made the decision that they were going for broke in this battle. They needed to take these enemy ships out now before they opted to jump away, only to return later and plaster their troop ships like they had at Intus.
The first volley of missiles was their SM-97 Starburst missiles. These missiles would detonate about halfway to the enemy. When they exploded, they emitted a flash of light with specially designed electronic wizardry that temporarily blinded an enemy’s targeting system.
This SM-97s were quickly followed by the SM-98s. These were the Ghost missiles. Once the Starburst had gone off, the body of the 98s released five dozen smaller missiles that emitted the same electronic signature as the 98s or the newer SM-99 Tridents. The Tridents were the nuclear warheads, the ones that packed the real punching power. The Ghosts packed a ten-thousand-pound high-explosive warhead, but they were nothing like the Tridents’ variable yield nukes.
If the missiles were used correctly, then the Orbot ships shouldn’t know what hit them until it was too late. The humans executed this completely new tactic and strategy with renewed hope of defeating the Zodark and Orbot ships.
“All missiles are away, Captain,” LaFine informed Captain McKee.
McKee nodded as she turned to face Commander Bonhauf. Bonhauf had originally served in the Greater European Union Navy before the big reorg. He’d been part of a swath of GEU and Asian Alliance officers that had transferred over to the GW as part of the Republic integration program.
“Commander Bonhauf, how are we holding up?” McKee questioned. She was concerned with how much damage they were taking. The battleships were now starting to focus their attention entirely on the GW. While the George Washington was a large tank of a ship, even they could only sustain so much damage.
Bonhauf grimaced. “They haven’t punched through our armor yet, but they’re getting close. Those battleships are specifically targeting our main gun and then the primary and secondary ones in those orders. As of right now, we’re down to thirty-two percent of our primary and secondary turrets on the port side of the ship. It’s a good thing we emptied our missile batteries—we just took several maser hits, effectively destroying them.”
McKee shook her head at the news. They couldn’t keep taking a beating like this for long or they’d be in trouble. Meters and meters of their new armor were being melted right off with each of these maser hits.
“C-FO, if we launch our fighters and bo
mbers now, how long will it take ’em to get in range of doing some damage to those battleships?” McKee asked of her Commander, Flight Operations.
Captain Anatoly Kornukov wrinkled his brow as he crunched some numbers. It wasn’t just a matter of getting the airwing launched. They needed to know that the fighters and bombers were in close enough to get in position to attack the Orbot ships without having their ordnance destroyed or being destroyed themselves. If they launched their fighters from too far out, the Orbots would have enough time to zero in on them and take them out before they could launch their missiles.
He finished his calculations and responded, “We could launch now, but I recommend we have the airwing form up behind the battleships near the tail end of our battlegroup. The fighters and bombers will stay shielded while we get in closer. At our current trajectory and velocity, we should come within eighty-six thousand kilometers of each other in ninety minutes. At that point, I’ll order the airwing to pop out from behind the battleships and hit them hard. Then they can duck back behind the battlewagons as we pass them by.”
Captain McKee didn’t respond right away. She held up a hand as she did some quick calculations of her own. The way she saw it, this meant they needed to take a pounding from the Orbot ships for at least ninety more minutes before the bombers could unload their nukes. She shook her head in frustration before finally agreeing with his plan.
The former Russian officer went into action, scrambling the four squadrons of F-97 Orions and the two squadrons of B-99 Raiders.
“Captain, the Paris is going down. They just lost reactor control,” called out Lieutenant Commander Molly Branson, her coms officer. The Paris was one of the newest Republic battleships. It wasn’t the new Altairian version currently being built, but it was still a solidly built battlewagon.
