by B. V. Larson
For now, all he saw was a short narrow tube lined with rails. Weaver floated millimeters from the electromagnetic conduits, straining to be loosed. Vango felt the tug of the outward spin of the assault carrier; even if Temasek lost all power and grav, the fighter would fall outward and away from the mother ship, ready to fight.
As the numbers reached zero Weaver accelerated gently, sliding smoothly until suddenly he was free and in open space. Around him he saw the rest of the sortie of one hundred StormCrows, half of Temasek’s complement, deployed now to counter any more. Out and ready to deal with anything the Meme threw at them, they extended the sensor reach of the fleet – and frankly shifted two hundred people off of each crowded carrier. The other seven ACs would be launching their sorties as well.
“I love this moment,” Vango said over the internal comm. “Free at last.”
“I know what you mean,” Helen responded. “What’s our assignment?”
“Weren’t you listening in the briefing?”
“Not really. Too busy being sick.”
“Sick?” Consternation was evident in his voice.
She laughed. “Yeah, Stymey brewed up some cheap hooch somehow. I was glad to link in and not feel my body.”
“Dammit Helen, we’re going into combat and you’re hung over?”
She laughed wickedly, and then he got it. “You’re jerking my chain.”
“As hard as I can. You’re such a straight arrow, Markis. I’m as sober as you are, more’s the pity.”
Vango scowled. “You know that’s why I use my handle. To make them all forget I’m the son of Earth’s Chairman.”
“Not everyone cares…but I get it.”
“Update coming in anyway…” He examined the data burst as they drifted, then confirmed their orders. “Here we go, I got the coordinates. Looks like we just patrol quietly until we see something.”
“Right. Running weapons diagnostic sequence.” He could feel her pushing electrons around, as he had secondary access to all of the ship’s armament. “All in the green.”
“Good to hear.” He rotated Weaver, then tapped the fusion engine. Other Crows around did the same, spreading out in all directions to take their places between the big ships. “Let’s see those little SOBs try to sneak in now with eight hundred of us waiting.” His statement reeked of bravado, he knew, because eight hundred fighters were swallowed in the vastness of interstellar space.
Even so, the ship he wore was more than just a short-range weapons platform. Though small for a spaceship, it was over fifty meters long, a sleek cylinder with four stubby wings that had nothing to do with flying and everything to do with weapons, sensors and maneuvering thrusters. Each stub sported a laser, a turreted railgun and a rotary missile launcher for short-range use. Tucked behind each lurked a shielded port from which feather drones could be ejected and recovered.
Weaver’s main armament filled its nose: a large microwave laser, designed to cook the internal biology of their living enemies. Where normal lasers flash-heated the enemy skin with optical frequencies and thus could sometimes be reflected away, the electromagnetic beams of a maser required different defenses. EarthFleet’s varying weapon suites were designed to force the Meme to play Rochambeau with their countermeasures.
On the other hand EarthFleet heavy warships relied on a brute-force approach for their defenses: ferrocrystal armor layered with reflectives, superconductors and ablatives. Each successive skin countered different types of weapons, usually taking several hits before it failed. The enemy hyperkinetic missiles were the most dangerous exception, delivering so much energy that massive hardened thickness was the only real proof.
A StormCrow was far too small to be armored that way, and so relied on speed and agility to survive. Still, Vango knew, they were there to support the fleet, not vice-versa; their role was to skirmish, to hit and run, to pick off weapons and take the easy shots. Let those battleships slug it out with railgun-shot swarms heavier than my entire fighter, he thought. We’re here to sting and sting again.
“Datalink is up,” Helen called unnecessarily – he knew it as soon as she did. As the narrowband comms found Weaver, the fighter was integrated into the aerospace control network and his senses expanded even further.
Vango unsealed his suit for a moment to reach inside and withdraw the tiny drive Rick had given him. No time like the present, he thought, and, I hope you don’t get us killed, ol’ buddy. But he trusted his friend and cyber-warfare expert, and out here he figured they could use all the help they could get. Slipping it into a data slot, he told it to boot.
“Let’s –” he started to say.
“Bogey, danger close –” Helen yelped, and Vango’s attention suddenly narrowed to a pinpoint as he felt something appear nearby, a mere hundred kilometers away and drifting closer. “Where the hell did that come from?” she stuttered. “It wasn’t there before!”
“Don’t talk, engage it!” he said as he launched the Crow’s feathers. These tiny drones had no weapons but were full of active sensors. If something wanted to home in on a radar or lidar, it would hit the squawking drones and not the silent StormCrow.
“Already on it,” she said, and he felt the wing weapons firing at the bogey.
Looking closer, he realized the target was stealth-black and cold, and even the hammering of the feathers’ actives didn’t show very much. How had they even seen it? No way he could have…but he hadn’t seen it. Helen had noticed it first, then he had felt it…
Suddenly the thing blazed with fusion light, turning to leap toward Weaver at hundreds of gravities. Vango’s reactions were even faster, lighting his own fusion drive to dodge sideways and forward, turning toward the enemy in the age-old tactic of the fighter pilot – get inside the opponent’s turn radius and thus his decision curve.
Fortunately this enemy wasn’t as maneuverable as a hyper. As it flashed within a kilometer he could finally see it, lit up brightly in the glare of the defensive lasers. His link told him it was a Meme sentry. Must have been one of the ones that got away. It was lying doggo and as soon as we lit it up, it tried to suicide. It must be out of missiles.
“Ahhhh!” Vango wasn’t sure if it was him or Helen screaming over the link as he twisted his metal body out of the way of the oncoming drone. He could feel his wizzo pummeling it with laser energy and railgun ammo, one-gram ball bearings. The sentry staggered and tumbled, flashing past as its fusion drive died.
Helen fired a chase missile that quickly caught up with it and blew it to kingdom come.
“Save those,” Vango barked. “Remember, there is no resupply. Next time just let me line up the maser and fry it.”
“Sure,” she sulked. “You get all the fun.”
“Cheer up, you did a fine job for your first real engagement,” he praised. “Nobody can call you ‘cherry’ anymore.” Vango sent a query through the network. “Looks like we got the first fighter kill of this battle.”
“Okay, old man. How many does that make for you?”
“Forty-nine combat sorties, third confirmed kill. Meme don’t use small craft enough to rack up many.”
“Maybe you’ll be an ace before this is done.” Helen adjusted her weapons suite. “How did we see that thing?”
“What do you mean?” Vango asked casually. He already had a suspicion.
“One minute it wasn’t there, then suddenly it was…like I could smell it. I’m reviewing the record and I can’t pinpoint anything concrete…just that I suddenly knew it was there before Weaver’s systems detected it.”
“Yeah, me too. Must have been something intuitive. That’s why human minds will always be in the fight.”
Helen snorted in disbelief. “That’s a crock. It must have been something concrete, like it passed between us and a bright star and we both noticed it.”
“Maybe it was my angel,” he laughed.
“Your what?”
“My angel. I’ve always felt I had one looking out for me.”
&
nbsp; “You mean…like something supernatural? Double crock. The natural world is all there is.”
Vango fired the thrusters briefly, then fired them again, performing a barrel-roll in space. “Look all around us. Look at the grandeur that is Creation. Do you really think this came about by accident?”
“Oh, I am so not going to have this discussion. At least not here, and sober.”
His wizzo sounded uncomfortable, so Vango relented. “Just telling you what I believe. But angel or intuition or lucky break, we got the thing before it could do any more damage.”
They were quiet for a few minutes, running through their checklists and watching their sectors. “I still think there’s something funny going on,” Helen muttered.
Because of the link, Vango could hear her no matter how quietly she spoke. Crews who worked together a long time claimed they started to read each others’ thoughts that way. There were a surprising number of marriages that resulted from fighter pairings, and even more longtime friendships. He wondered to himself if he should say anything…then decided that this was the best time to do it, after they’d just dodged a bullet and won a victory.
Vango cleared his throat. “Helen…Troya…”
“Uh oh, you just used my real name…”
“Yeah. I just wanted to tell you something I should have told you earlier.”
“What? Come on, spit it out, angel boy.”
“Well, you know Commander Johnstone – Rick – is a CyberComm expert. Actually, he’s more than an expert, he’s a bloody software genius. He kind of hides it so he can stay on the Bridge instead of stuck in some geek cell deep inside the ship, but he’s as good as they come.”
“So?”
“So…he gave me some upgraded software to try out.”
“Ty out…here, now? In combat? Jesus Christ, you could have gotten us killed!” She sounded furious.
“Yeah, well, would you mind not taking the Lord’s name in vain like that?”
“Don’t change the subject, you religious turd,” Helen snarled. “It’s fine to risk your own life, but not mine too.”
“Yes, but it worked. I’m thinking it was the new software that allowed us to see and smell the sentry. And when you were fighting, didn’t it feel like everything was easier, faster?”
She choked back a reply to try to think without passion. “Yes, now that you mention it, it did.”
“So, there you go.” He sounded smug.
“There you go what? This isn’t about whether it was good software, it’s about you and me being a team. I know this is my first combat mission but we’ve been training together for six real months. It’s my ass out here too. So are we?”
“A team?” He sighed. “Yeah. I’m sorry, I should have told you.”
“Yes you should.” Helen kept a sulky silence for as long as she could, then said with a grin in her voice, “I about crapped my pants when that thing showed up, though!” She started laughing uproariously.
He laughed too, sharing her giddiness at surviving their first real combat together.
***
Sub-Lieutenant Horton at the BioMed station called, “Admiral, I have an odd report. Assault carrier Giessen says they are having problems with a bio-weapon released by the missile that hit them.”
“Counteragents?” Plagues were nothing new. The Meme routinely added them to their missiles and the damage control parties deployed decontamination chemicals, counterphages and nanobots to control them.
“They say nothing’s working, sir. They’ve tried everything, even radioactives, chemical fuels, hydraulic fluid…this stuff just keeps eating plastic and metal. The only thing that’s slowed it down is flame, or vacuum. They’re requesting help.”
Absen cursed. “And that damned puppy Captain Bailey is only just telling us about it? It’s been how many hours since the missile hit him?” I’ll have that fool in the brig – if we survive this. “Start shifting Marines to other carriers, and get all of BioMed working on a counteragent, tell them I said this is maximum effort. There are more than two thousand people on that ship.” He deliberately did not think about what would happen if they did not get the infection under control. “And point out to them that if they don’t find something, Conquest could be next hit. That ought to motivate them.”
Turning back to the screen he examined his fleet formation. The irony of their continuing deceleration and jinking meant that their ETA never got any closer. As they approached Afrana they moved slower and slower, extending their time, much as if a ground car kept braking the nearer it got to its destination.
Absen felt better with the StormCrows out on rotating patrol. The stealthy drones lying in wait had already shown him his error, and he tried never to make the same mistake twice.
He’d also complicated his own situation by shattering hundreds of thousands of asteroids with the railgun barrage; now there were tens if not hundreds of millions of pebbles in the fleet’s way. The lighter ships had lined up at a distance behind as the heavy ones swept forward, clawing debris out of their way with their magnetic scoops, defensive lasers or smashing it aside with their armor.
The StormCrows just had to take their chances.
They’d already lost two to rock strikes, though their crews had survived. Price of doing business. Absen needed them and their feather drones to see. Right now those were hammering the ether with their radar and lidar, to allow others to collect the reflected electromagnetics.
They’d fended off one more smaller attempt to ambush the task force; the little Meme sentries did not seem smart enough or well-directed enough to go after his most vulnerable ships – the assault carriers and frigates.
“Sir, I have coordinated fusion flares,” the Sensors officer on watch said, throwing the computer simulation up into the main holotank. “Order of battle matching says it’s sixteen cruisers and thirty-five frigates, maneuvering into our path at slow speed. Intercept looks like about…nineteen hours at these velocities.”
“Keep an eye on them, you know how fast that can change. Major Parnell,” he turned to the Aerospace Forces Helmsman in the cockpit, “keep a running plot of minimum-time intercept assuming maximum Meme effort. I want to know the soonest they can hit us at all times.”
“Yes, sir. Running the numbers now.” A moment later she fed her data into the holotank, adding symbols, colors and numbers, suppressing others. “Right now minimum intercept time is thirty-four minutes ten seconds – that number there.” A row of digits pulsed.
“Raise our readiness state as that number falls. When we’re under ten minutes, call for Primary Watch.” Absen liked to have his best people on the bridge when battle was likely. “How long to the planet?”
“With current deceleration profiles, twenty-two hours to cross the orbit of Afrana.”
“So they might be planning to engage us three hours from the planet, and fight us as we approach. Makes sense, we’ll have to slow down a lot or fly on past. How many orbital platforms do they have left?”
“Just three, sir, that the nukes didn’t get,” Sensors responded. “They look to be hybrid mechanicals, sir, like the intel briefing showed us. We’ve never seen anything exactly like them, but we got a rough idea of their firepower from the fight with our missiles. They’re about battleship level.”
“That’s assuming they don’t have something we haven’t seen yet. And they could have bigger weapons because they don’t need to waste space on engines, heavy gravplates, bulky supplies…any number of things only a starship needs.” If I were the enemy commander, I’d try to induce a running fight to sucker us within range of those orbitals, and bring up that Guardian ship behind the planet. That would be the schwerpunkt, the point of decisive battle, at the planet.
“The Guardian is moving up, sir,” Sensors called. “It’s on an intercept burn to join the others, but later and back a bit.”
“Makes sense. He’ll use his warships to screen and his big ship to anchor his fleet – just like we are.” A
bsen stroked his chin. “Comms, bring everyone to ready state two. Five minute drill. Weapons, what’s your estimation of a missile and railgun strike on the remaining orbitals?”
The Weapons watch officer brought up a graphic. “It would take a significant amount of expendables to finish them off from this distance. The closer we get, the harder it is for them to dodge. I’d advise against it, sir.”
“All right.” Absen rubbed his chin. “Tell the battleships to start a slow rolling fire of railgun single shots every few minutes, and keep it up. That will force the orbitals to keep adjusting, burning fuel. And maybe we’ll get lucky. In fact, tell them to start laying slow fire on all the enemy ships including the Guardian. Might as well use cheap ammo to keep them from resting…we still have two billion rounds.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Weapons touched a control. “Firing will begin in two minutes.”
Absen stood up to stretch, shooting COB Timmons a significant look. “Parnell, initiate a no-notice drill for the auxiliary bridge to take over function in,” he looked at his watch, “seven seconds.”
The helmsman nodded and closed his eyes, and seven seconds later the bridge’s consoles all went dark.
“Take a break, everyone. Get up and stretch. Let them run the fleet for a while.” Absen had to make sure Zylstra and his other two command officers had some time in The Chair for real. “I’ll be in my quarters. Call me if you need me.”
Chapter 8
SystemLord consider his enemy’s approach, one globular fleet defined mostly by the size of its fusion flares. His Sentries had scanned many up close before dying, but with the long range and the missile launches, even Monitor’s great brain lost track of which was which.
