Battlegroup (StarFight Series Book 2)

by T. Jackson King

  Jacob scanned the holos that surrounded his seat. On his left was the sensor holo that tracked all incoming radiation and moving neutrino sources. At left front was a ship cross-section of the Lepanto, showing the status of every deck and each weapons system. At right front was a true space holo showing black space, bright stars and the white sweep of the Milky Way. Lastly, on his right hung a situational holo that showed the local star, the system’s seven planets, the asteroid and Kuiper belts and a dotted line that represented the magnetosphere boundary.

  In the situational holo their 21 ships showed as green dots arranged in a line that faced outward, toward the spot 500 kilometers ahead where the wasps were expected to arrive. The lineup of Battlestar, frigates, destroyers, cruisers, destroyers, frigates and his father’s Battlestar was called the Iron Bar formation. Its purpose was to concentrate the proton lasers of the destroyers in the middle, between the two biggest ships with their antimatter cannons. A modification of the academy formation put the frigates behind the Battlestars and cruisers so their thicker armor could shelter the frigates, while allowing the frigates to add their nose lasers to combined targeting of enemy ships. It made for four deadly firing formations of gas and proton lasers, while the two Battlestars could independently fire their AM cannons. In theory, the combined firepower of lasers and antimatter beams should allow the immediate destruction of six enemy ships, thanks to the co-targeting of proton and CO2 lasers at four ships while the antimatter zapped two.

  He had wondered at the large distance between the Midway and the Lepanto, but Daisy had pointed out to him the distance corresponded to the 4,000 kilometer range of each starship’s AM cannon. In essence, each Battlestar controlled a globe of space 8,000 klicks across. With the two Battlestars oriented as they were, their antimatter cannons could fire ahead, behind or sideways across a fighting front of 16,000 kilometers. Of course, shooting other than straight ahead from the AM node at the top of each ship’s nose required attitude thrusters to flip that ship’s orientation. The Lepanto’s node showed Green Operational.

  “Tactical, link me with Chief Linkletter at the AM cannon!” Jacob called out.

  “Linking,” responded Rosemary.

  “Chief Linkletter reporting,” came the voice of the young man over Jacob’s helmet comlink. “Captain, you have orders for me?”

  “I do. Activate the AM node. Advise me when the cannon is ready to fire.”

  “Activating, sir.” A minute passed. Then two. “Antimatter cannon node is ready to fire!”

  He looked to his ship cross-section holo. The right and left outrigger pods carried heavy CO2 lasers at the front and rear of each pod, for a total of four deadly lasers. The outside hull of each pod also held a proton laser mount, while proton mounts were at the center of his ship’s spine and belly. They were supplemented by Smart Rock railgun launchers at the ship’s nose and tail, with plasma batteries on the ship’s spine and belly. Eight missile launch silos poked out above the rear thruster nozzles. Altogether, the multiple weapons mounts allowed a Battlestar to control every direction from which an enemy might approach. But most vital beyond the AM cannon was the cross-linking of laser targeting.

  “Weapons, what is the status of our forward lasers?”

  “Sir,” called Oliver Diego y Silva from his front Weapons station. “Petty officers Quincy Blackbourne and Olivia Houndstooth report their outrigger laser stations are co-targeting with the lasers of our frigates and cruisers.”

  Jacob looked up to the image of his father. “Fleet admiral, the Lepanto is ready to fire on multiple enemies. All ships of Operation StarFight have assumed the Alpha Iron Bar formation as ordered by you.”

  His father, who wore a vacsuit like everyone on every ship of the line, nodded briefly. Being practical he did not wear his combo hat inside the suit’s flexible helmet. “So I see. Lepanto, all ships, move to Alert Hostile Enemy status!”

  Jacob looked up. “Melody, change ship status to Alert Hostile Enemy!”

  Overhead, the blinking red lights of Alert Combat Ready changed to blinking purple lights. A whirring siren that sounded like an old-style fire engine filled the Bridge.

  “Ship status changed to Alert Hostile Enemy,” the AI said, her tone a mix of excitement and worry.

  Jacob reached up and pulled his helmet down over his head. It sealed with a snap-click. The vacsuit’s enviro controls started up with a blast of oxy-nitrogen. Telltale status lights appeared in a chin-up position just below his nose. His seat vibrated as automatic straps moved out and over his chest in an x-pattern. Pairs of straps went over his legs. The straps were a backup to the inertial damper field that covered the entire ship.

  “Crew, prepare for combat.” He looked to the right front of the Bridge. “Gravity! Any sign of a graviton surge yet?”

  “Not yet,” replied Cassandra Pilotti. “Sir, will advise when my sensor shows a surge.”

  Jacob hoped the theory developed by Cassandra during their stay at the orbital station was correct. The Italian-American had worked with Lori to analyze their sensor records of the arrival of the wasp ships at the edge of Kepler 10’s magnetosphere. While Lori had been the first to detect the activating of the artificial black hole field by the giant wasp ship, Cassandra had been motivated to figure out a way of knowing when the wasp fleet was about to arrive. She had noticed a large surge of gravitons from the spot in space where, moments later, the six wasp ships had appeared. Lori had looked at the chief petty officer’s sensor results and concluded the Alcubierre space-time bubble produced by each enemy starship had a small leakage of gravitons during operation. While it was impossible to track any ship moving in Alcubierre space-time since its graviton leakage would be swamped by the gravitons emitted by stars and distant galaxies, if you knew where an enemy ship might appear, you could record the normal graviton flux for that spot and then detect any increase as a graviton surge produced by the imminent arrival of an Alcubierre drive starship.

  In the admiral’s image, his XO spoke. “Sir! Our Gravity chief is also monitoring for graviton surges.”

  “Sir,” called the captain of the Midway. The man was as focused on his holo grouping as Jacob. “Our antimatter node is activated and ready to fire! Four shots available.”

  His father looked directly at Jacob. “Lepanto captain, you and all ships may fire immediately upon detection of a bandit. All ships, ordnance is cleared Hot!”

  Jacob glanced at the ship cross-section that showed seven thermonuke-loaded missiles were already resting in seven missile silos, while three Darts were lined up and ready to launch from Silo Eight, if he gave the order. Which reminded him to look down to where Daisy, Richard and Alicia now sat.

  “Chief O’Connor, feel free to advise me on any ship vector change you think would best help our targeting of the enemy.”

  “Captain, will do,” said the white-haired man who had led the boarding of the wasp ship.

  Jacob looked back to the front wallscreen. The center held the neutrino sensor image, while the left side showed a situational graphic of the system and the right side displayed a true space image of charcoal black space leavened only a bit by hundreds of stars and the white slash of the Milky Way. The center of the true space image was focused on the projected arrival point of the wasp fleet. At some point it would be filled with green laser streaks, red proton beams and black antimatter beams. There would also be the yellow lightning bolts of the wasp ships. The prior fights had made space resemble a summer thunderstorm with lightning everywhere. He hoped the spinning that every ship would do once the enemy appeared would reduce the damage done by those bolts. While they didn’t penetrate the way enemy lasers did, they did zap segments of a ship’s adaptive optics lenses, rendering that hull area less able to deflect incoming laser beams. The combination had been enough to cut deep through the two meters of armor of the Lepanto, and the meter thick armor of the Chesapeake. When the wasps had gone to combined targeting and focused on his battle group’s frigates, two ships
had died quickly. The frigates had just ten centimeters of hardened armor. It had proved unable to withstand more than three combined laser hits.

  “Captain! Gravitons are surging!” yelled Cassandra, sounding surprised.

  “Where from?” he called.

  “Ahead! All across our front. There’s got to be gobs of ships coming in!”

  Gobs was not a firm number. But Jacob didn’t blame Cassandra. This was the moment they had all known was coming.

  “Fire at will on enemy detection!” he called out.

  The true space image of the wallscreen now showed star dots rippling as incoming gravity bubbles that were Alcubierre space-time miniverses arrived at the edge of the magnetosphere. He lost count of the rippling spots. Too many to quickly count.

  “Tactical! Enlarge the electro-optical view!”

  “Enlarging,” Rosemary murmured.

  The true space image filled with dozens of log-shaped starships, arranged in groups of six. The hexagonal formation stretched across the front of the image. Three of the ships were giant ones like the ship that had nearly killed the Lepanto with its artificial black hole weapon. One such giant was directly in front of the Battlestar. Range to it was 473 kilometers, per the neutrino sensor.

  “Antimatter cannon fire!” Jacob yelled.

  A thick black stream of negative antimatter streaked out from his ship and hit the flat nose of the giant ship. White-yellow plasma covered the ship’s nose. Then it moved inward, blowing out hull sections on either side. But the explosive dissembling of the giant ship ended as the expanding antimatter cloud formed by the beam reached out faster than simple matter could move and turned those hull fragments into star-yellow globs of light. A large sun now glowed where once a giant wasp ship had lived.

  “All lasers firing!” yelled Rosemary.

  Too much happened simultaneously.

  The Midway’s first antimatter shot hit a normal-sized wasp ship, converting its entire 300 meter length into a rod of star stuff. A new star filled the spot where the wasp ship had been.

  Four groups of green lasers streaked out from the Lepanto, Midway, cruisers and frigates, impaling four log ships. In a few seconds those ships became clumps of molten yellow metal. A second later all four became balls of white-glowing plasma as their internal fusion reactors lost containment and made the ship remains into thermonuclear fireballs.

  A group of eight red proton laser beams from the destroyers now impacted on the middle giant wasp ship, converting its flat nose and front ring of weapons tubes into glowing plasma. The front of the giant ship showed black tubeway holes and horizontal deck framing as the plasma grew thin enough to allow a view of the giant enemy ship.

  A part of his mind kept count.

  One giant wasp ship killed by the Lepanto’s first antimatter beam. A normal wasp ship killed by his father’s first AM beam. A second giant ship badly damaged. Four log ships vaporized by lasers. The third giant wasp ship now flipped over and fired its thrusters toward the Iron Bar formation, thereby blocking incoming red and green laser beams. Six wasp ships dead and one badly wounded.

  A new group of green laser beams hit four other smaller log ships, while the Midway’s second antimatter shot took out a fifth log ship.

  Five new stars filled the blackness of space, joining the fading glow of the first seven.

  “Tactical! Shift our AM aim toward those two ships at 270 degrees!” Jacob yelled.

  The Lepanto’s front rose and moved to the upper left of the true space field of ships that, he now saw from his situational holo counter, had been 36 in number.

  “Targeted!” yelled Rosemary.

  “Fire!”

  Jacob watched as Linkletter’s crew fired a second pulse of black antimatter at the two wasp log ships that appeared to be nearly side by side, although one likely led the other since the original formations of the arriving ships were six rings of six ships each. Just like the formation that had first attacked them in Kepler 22.

  Two new stars appeared where the black beam struck.

  Incoming green laser beams and yellow lightning strikes struck at the twenty-one ships of the two battle groups.

  “Nose hit!” yelled Joaquin at Life Support.

  “They’re targeting the frigates!” called Oliver.

  “Linkletter, fire at will!” Jacob called.

  His eyes saw a third stream of antimatter reach out and impale a log ship that was thrusting sideways, trying to escape the target zone. It died and became another small star.

  “We lost the Ofira!” called Rosemary.

  Fuck.

  “Frigates, move closer behind us and the cruisers!” Jacob called out over the neutrino comlink that connected the Bridge of every Earth ship.

  “Fire on that departing big ship!” called his father.

  The Midway’s antimatter beam reached out.

  But the giant ship’s yellow-orange exhaust of plasma was sixty kilometers long.

  The meeting of the two created a blast of energy that hit the rear of the giant ship, pushing it way faster, while creating a large cloud that blocked penetration by CO2 and proton beams.

  “The Kursk is gone,” Rosemary said, sadness in her voice.

  The heavily damaged second giant wasp ship had now flipped to aim its thrusters toward the Iron Bar formation. It followed the other giant ship out and away from their arrival point. Twenty other wasp ships now did the same flip over in an effort to escape.

  Black antimatter beams shot out from the Lepanto, three in succession. Each beam hit the side of a turning wasp ship, converting its matter into a glowing white-yellow cloud of plasma.

  Three new stars filled the void.

  A fourth black beam from the Midway chased after a fleeing ship. One more tiny star filled the darkness.

  “Enemy out of antimatter range,” Rosemary called. “Now at 7,451 kilometers distance and moving at one-tenth lightspeed. Our lasers are firing but their exhaust flares are dispersing the beams.”

  Jacob looked at the moving neutrino counter. The number of purple enemy dots showed as eighteen. Which meant the two battle groups had lost two ships in return for killing eighteen enemy ships. A one to nine ratio. Still, a hundred fifty humans had died on those two frigates. More ghosts.

  “Captain, the enemy is reversing formation. Looks like an umbrella arrangement,” reported Rosemary. “All enemy ships are now beyond our weapons reach. Range is 10,473 kilometers. Enemy is firing on us.”

  Three dozen green and yellow beams and bolts streaked into the midst of the Iron Bar formation.

  “We’re spinning!” called Louise at Navigation.

  “Hits on our spine and tail,” called Oliver from Weapons. “All weapons are still operational.”

  Other ship captains reported similar hits, but no fatal damage.

  Jacob looked to his father’s image. “Admiral! I recommend our Battlestars launch four missiles each to create a thermonuke plasma cloud in front of us. It will shield us from incoming beams! You saw this in the videos I sent you!”

  “Agreed! Captain, fire four of our missiles.”

  “Firing missiles, sir,” called his father’s captain.

  “Tactical, do the same,” Jacob called.

  “Four missiles going out,” Rosemary said hurriedly.

  In seconds, once the missiles curved around and their chemfuel rockets pushed them ahead of the stationary line of Earth ships, each missile dispersed five thermonukes of three megaton power. Thirty tiny stars now glowed between the Earth ships and the distant wasp ships. The incoming laser beams and lightning bolts were diffused by the expanding plasma clouds, which soon became one giant arc of plasma that stretched across the 16,000 kilometers of the Iron Bar formation.

  “Enemy has ceased firing,” Rosemary said, just seconds before his father’s XO said the same thing. “Enemy has retreated to 97,000 kilometers distance.”

  His father’s face held more lines than during their private talk. The man’s dark brow
n eyes fixed on Jacob. “Captain Renselaer, your ship fought well. I counted six antimatter shots from your node. We got off four. Our accelerator is working to build reloads. The enemy lost eighteen ships. The rest are holding formation well beyond us. What is the condition of your battle group?”

  Jacob looked up at the images of each ship captain that ran across the top of the wallscreen. The seven remaining captains who led his group of ships all held up their thumbs, signaling their ships were still functional. He focused back on his father.

  “Fleet admiral, all StarFight ships report they are combat operational, including the Lepanto.”

  The man nodded, looked aside at a holo, then back. “My captains report the same. Half my ships took glancing blows. Four of them lost part of their adaptive optics to those miserable yellow lightning bolts. The Midway lost its spine plasma battery. My cruisers each took deep strikes into their armor. No casualties other than our two lost ships.”

  Which meant their combined battle groups now numbered nineteen ships. The enemy had eighteen ships, two of them being the giant ships, though one of them had lost a part of its front hull. Still, it was a deadly force. Two giant ships versus two Battlestars. Jacob sent a prayer to the Goddess that they would now leave the Kepler 10 system. They were beyond the magnetosphere boundary. The wasps could enter Alcubierre space-time at any moment. Would they leave? Or would they attack and try to kill Valhalla?

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Hunter One scanned every perception imager in his Flight Chamber. Their contents told him what he had felt was not imaginary. The front quarter of his nest was gone, thanks to seven strikes by heavy sky light beams. Other parts of his outer shell were scored by incoming sky light beams of the green form. At least his nest had not gone the way of the other Hunter’s nest. Nine hundred Swarmers including every larvae pod on that Colony nest were now mist in the cold darkness of space, far from the warmth of the nearby sky light. He looked to the image of Hunter Prime, who had acted faster than any Swarmer when the surprise attack had happened. Even as black beams reached out from two large Soft Skin nests, the Hunter Prime had flipped his nest and flown away from the deadly arrival spot. Command pheromones from his nest had told all other Swarmer nests to do the same, and to fire on the Soft Skins with their tail stinger tubes. Now the surviving nests rested far beyond the reach of the Soft Skin weapons. But where once six six-groups of nests had flown in a cloud of deadliness, just three six-groups remained.