by John Lumpkin
“All right, we’ll try to hold some back, but we’re not a missile bus like the big ships,” Howell said. “And we may need them all just to keep after our targets.”
Ahead of them was Zulu-One, the designation for the beam cruiser Zhou Man, a ship Neil had fought before in the system. He was surprised at the degree of anger the little light on his screen aroused in him. Beside her were two speedy escort frigates, Zulus Two and Three, which were roughly on par with the Apache in mass and capability. The computer used their hull numbers to identify them as the Maqiang and the Dadao.
Both the Ramage and Apache kept their noses pointed directly at Zhou Man, so their main cannon could function as counterbatteries should the beam cruiser fire on them, but any deviation and the frigates could suffer a devastating blow. Meanwhile, Maqiang accelerated to one side, lining up to flank the two American ships, and Dadao stood sentry near the beam cruiser.
“Range to target, two thousand klicks,” Ortega called. “Zulu-One is about twelve hundred klicks from being able to cause damage to ships in the San Francisco group.”
“Signal from Romeo,” the comm officer said. Romeo was Ramage, whose captain was senior to Howell. “Apache, maintain bearing, weapons free to engage Zulu-Two.”
A score of missiles raced away toward the flanking Chinese frigate. Apache’s gun turret rotated and fired. Ramage released her own missiles, fifty-eight of them, all targeting the beam cruiser.
“Zombie! Zombie! Inbound gun shells from Zulu-Two and Zulu-Three!” the sensor chief said.
“Point defenses, take them when they’re in range,” Howell said. “Don’t miss, Barrett.”
Maqiang’s shells were aimed at where Apache was going to be. To make some of them overshoot, Ensign Cohen cut the candle at random intervals and briefly coasted. As the shells closed, Apache’s defensive lasers focused on them, and Barrett saw small, satisfying sparks on her screen as their fuel reserves detonated.
Maqiang’s defenses targeted the incoming missiles, destroying eight before the survivors burst into flechettes. The frigate turned to dodge, its lasers targeting individual flechettes.
“Hit!” the fire control officer shouted. “Multiple flechette strikes on Zulu-Two! Seeing multiple streamers on the hull – we got her good, sir!”
Neil made a fist.
The CIC officer said, “Sir, Romeo’s firing vector thrusters.”
No, no, Neil thought. Several coilgun rounds had made it through her defenses, and she had begun an emergency turn to dodge them, taking her main laser cannon off the Zhou Man.
The beam cruiser did not forgo the opportunity. The shutter on her main laser retracted, and she fired a half-second pulse. The ultraviolet beam struck Ramage in her top arrowhead, burning all the way through, and cutting into her central cylinder. Ramage’s counterlaser turrets fired, but they were too distant and weak to burn through Zhou Man’s armored shutter.
“Captain, Romeo calling,” the comms officer said. Howell nodded.
An unfamiliar voice spoke in the ears of Apache’s officers.
“This is Lieutenant Jackson. I’m, uh, the deputy engineering officer. I’ve lost touch with CIC, so we’re controlling the ship from down in engineering. We’re hurt pretty bad, but we can still steer, and a lot of the defenses are still showing green.”
“Point your nose back at Zulu-One,” Howell ordered.
“Right, sir, we’ll, uh, do that.”
Ramage’s vector thrusters fired again, turning her to face the great laser of Zhou Man once again.
Then Jackson added, “It looks like the laser pipes to our main forward cannon are both done for, so we can’t use that new counterlaser trick.”
Howell grimaced. Neil said, “Sir, the optics on the Ramage appear intact, so the Chinese won’t know she can’t shoot back. And tell Jackson they’ve still got someone in their secondary fire control, because their coilgun turret just rotated.”
Dadao went to work on Ramage’s missiles, whittling the number down to twenty before they burst into flechettes.
“Five minutes until our counterlaser turrets can take on Zulu-One,” announced Lieutenant Carruth. That meant Apache would at last be able to maneuver.
“Sir, showing missile damage to Zulus One and Three!” one of the sensor techs called. “Zulu-One is undergoing turnover. They’re pulling back!”
Dadao remained back to screen the beam cruiser’s escape. Ramage and Apache quickly flanked the Chinese frigate, and Jessica’s lasers raked her hull. She didn’t look badly damaged, but she thrust away, down below the plane of the system.
“We’ve got half our missiles left,” Carruth said to Howell. “Let’s hunt that beam cruiser down while we’ve got the advantage. We’ll need to stay between her and the main furball anyway.”
This was too easy, Neil thought. Why do I think that?
Remember the objective.
USS Valley Forge
Missile flechettes ripped through the main Chinese fleet, ventilating a medium cruiser and slicing into the antimatter storage ring of a destroyer, setting off an explosion that vaporized the ship. A light cruiser had its nose smashed in, but it kept coming. The beam cruiser Olympic scored a hit on the Chinese flagship, the heavy cruiser Weisheng.
The Chinese coilguns opened up, all at once, timed to force the American ships to start turns just as the enemy fleet entered effective laser range. Valley Forge and the other ships returned fire, but the Chinese numbers gave them the advantage … they had launched so many shells, and each eliminated a lane that an American ship could occupy and bring its best weapons and defenses to bear.
Erin watched the tactical plot, with hundreds of markers denoting incoming rounds. The American main body was arrayed in concentric triangles, with the flat side facing the enemy. The three light cruisers at the center, a triangle of destroyers in the middle ring, and four frigates in a diamond at the periphery. The enemy was spread out, also with their heaviest ships in the center of their formation. And thousands of klicks away, both Chinese beam cruisers were pulling back, their mission to flank the fleet unsuccessful, but at the cost of the frigate Chinook and the loss of the CIC crew of the Ramage.
But something’s not right, Erin thought. They’re concentrating their coilgun fire on the small ships on the periphery, leaving us a safe place to gather in the center. They should be trying to scatter us so they can defeat us in detail.
What if they want us together? She wondered if the Chinese had some kind of superweapon that required their enemies to be shoulder-to-shoulder. Nuke-pumped xaser? Those had never made it out of the lab. Then again, I guess a war like this could prompt some new research. But wouldn’t we have heard something? And it looks like they really did fire every missile they had while we were in the bombardment orbit.
“Captain Mallett, they’re trying to herd us together,” she said.
Mallett’s eyes never left the holo at the front of the CIC, but she nodded slightly, leaving Erin to wonder whether she had really heard her. The largest ships entered each other’s laser ranges, and a rapid exchange of invisible blasts followed. Shots were timed against the estimation of the enemy’s counterlasers capability, sometimes correctly. One of Valley Forge’s forward cannon took a hit from the enemy flagship, and a damage control team rushed to replace the primary mirror.
The fleets smashed together, and the battle became a furball. Three Chinese ships surrounded the frigate Kiowa, their weapons nipping her like jackals at a wounded antelope. A shell from Valley Forge’s guns struck the great fusion candle on the back of the heavy cruiser Yinghui, and the ship could only coast, unable to thrust, at least for the moment. The destroyer Cayo Muerto bled atmosphere after sustaining no less than six laser blasts to her main cylinder from Chinese ships, but she rotated and fired into a light cruiser that was bearing down on San Francisco.
They still aren’t pressing every advantage, Erin thought.
All the patterns and ship movements came together in her head, and she
saw the enemy strategy. I have to tell the captain, right now. Captain Mallett had gone up to the bridge to give a pep talk to the crew there, and she was taking a while returning. Erin turned over the guns to her chief, unbuckled from her console chair and pushed off to the hatch to the main shaft through the ship.
As she ascended, a gigawatt laser blast from the heavy cruiser Weisheng struck Valley Forge on the upper amidships, and Erin Quintana felt the breath sucked from her lungs, and she and three other people were thrown into space.
USS Apache
Apache was shadowing Zhou Man, still many thousands of klicks distant from the main battle. Everyone wanted to turn to the main fight, but doing so would give Zhou Man an angle to take long-range shots into it, as well. Apache was better used to screen that the beam cruiser from getting back into the fight.
“Apache, this is Ramage,” said Lieutenant Jackson’s voice in his ear.
“Go ahead,” Howell replied.
“Sir, can you check on Zulus Two and Three? Our ‘scope operator says they’ve changed orientation.”
Howell looked at Neil with an annoyed expression that said, “Handle this.”
Neil nodded. “Lieutenant Jackson, this is Lieutenant Mercer, Apache’s intel officer. We’ll check it out.” With his console, he took over two telescopes and pointed them at the receding frigates Dadao and Maqiang.
Both had come alive, their drive flares terawatt-bright in the scopes. They were heading away from Apache, unobstructed, toward the distant transports.
“Captain Howell, we’ve got to turn over, right now! Those figs are gunning for the herd!”
“But you said they were badly damaged and out of the fight!”
“Sir, they are hurt, but they may have been playing it worse than was the case, or maybe they patched up some of the damage,” Neil said. “After we moved out of range, the Maqiang had only one cooling fin out; we thought the other one was busted. That alone should have made them combat-ineffective, but it looks like they’ve got them both out now.”
Howell looked at the holo. “We don’t have a choice, do we, Mercer?” he said quietly. To everyone, he said, “All right, let’s orient to face the Dadao and thrust at a quarter-gee. I’ll send Ramage after the Maqiang.”
“Sir, that will use up a lot of our remaining remass,” Ensign Cohen warned.
“No choice,” Howell repeated. “Good thing we saved some of our missiles. That was the right call, there, Mercer.”
As soon as Apache flipped, Zhou Man did the same, firing its great laser into Apache’s hide. A cylinder of armor on the frigate’s rear quarter melted away, but the distance was too great, and the beam did not damage any vitals.
Neil examined the larger battle, and saw the break for the transports was a coordinated maneuver. Two more Chinese frigates, Zhuge Nu and Kuancheng, and a destroyer, Zhengyi, had blown past the main engagement, and still another frigate, Hudie Shuang Dao, had broken from escorting the other enemy beam cruiser, Deng Shichang, and raced by the frigate Sprague.
The beam cruiser Olympic was in the best position to attack the runners from the center. She executed a rapid turn to bring her main laser to bear and fired a tremendous blast into the nearest frigate. For a moment, the target ship looked unhurt, and its coilgun turret threw several shells back at the American. Then Kuancheng vanished in a majestic, antimatter-fueled fireball.
But the Olympic had exposed her midsection to other Chinese ships, which pounced. Their lasers opened a dozen puncture wounds along the ship’s hull and cut into two of the ship’s keels. She did not explode or shatter, but her back was broken, and she drifted away, life support working in only a few pockets around the ship.
Other American ships also turned to fire on the other runners, but the Chinese had anticipated the maneuver, launching coilgun shells to prevent them from lining up to take a shot. The captain of the light cruiser San Francisco decided to risk damage so she could target the receding Zhengyi, but before she completed the pivot, a shell got through her defenses, smashing through the neck between the ship’s arrowhead and main cylinder.
“All ships, fire remaining missiles at the runners,” Vice Admiral Cooper sent before San Francisco ceased transmitting.
They saved some missiles! Neil thought. Maybe Captain Howell’s message to Cooper’s flag captain got through. The ships New Orleans, 73 Easting, Cayo Muerto and Graves all launched what remained of their arsenals – just eighty-five missiles total. Chinese ships began picking them off as soon as they left their tubes, but about a score lasted long enough to burst into flechettes, a number of which tore into the Zhuge Nu. The flare from the frigate’s drive dimmed noticeably, and after a moment, the ship turned over, and thrust away from the fight.
Three frigates and a destroyer still running for the herd, Neil thought. Something occurred to him, and he looked for Valley Forge’s hull number on his tactical plot. There! She was firing maneuvering rockets to correct an uncontrolled spin, and she was falling away from the fight.
Erin! Please be all right. He tried to scroll through the log of automated messages all the ships sent to each other to see what happened, but the CIC caller announced the Dadao was within Apache’s missile envelope, and Neil had to focus his attention on the immediate threat.
It should have been a long chase, but Dadao wasn’t accelerating as fast as she should have been able to: maybe there was damage to her drive, or a remass tank. Dadao’s coilgun forced Apache to give ground to make several dodges, but Howell saved his missiles and closed the gap between the two ships to a few hundred kilometers.
Any closer, and we can’t be sure we can dodge every coilgun round, Neil knew.
“Fire control, ripple-fire all remaining missiles. Guns, Lasers, give it to them,” Howell said.
Jessica hit the Dadao with quarter-second bursts, targeting the frigate’s point defenses. The Chinese ship’s counterlasers fired but burned uselessly against Apache’s armor. Apache’s missiles fragmented, filling the sky with a hail of darts. Dadao at last dodged, giving Jessica an opportunity to slice its belly with a 500-megawatt blast.
She had either hit the CIC or the maneuver thruster control, because the ship kept turning and thrusting at the same time, forming a tight circle and steering itself right into a cloud of missile flechettes.
“Captain, getting a transmission from Zulu-Three. It’s their medical officer, says they’re surrendering and to please cease firing on them.”
Near the USS Valley Forge
Space, it turned out, smelled faintly like burning dust. Kind of like the first time you fire up the heater for the winter, Erin Quintana thought. Normally she would chide herself for such an idle thought, but floating in her emergency bubble didn’t leave her much else to do. She had had about four seconds of exposure before the bubble had closed around her.
Better than worrying about how many rads I’m absorbing, or whether I’ll be rescued before I run out of air, or whether the others in the shaft made it.
She was tired, the sort of tired you feel behind your eyes, the strung-out weariness of a mind and body willfully pushed beyond its limits. Only stimulants and adrenaline had kept the stupid haze of true exhaustion at bay, but they were wearing off. She tried to watch the distant flashes to discern what was going on in the battle. It seemed like the fight was spreading out. Maybe they saw the Hans trying to sneak some ships by us.
She saw two tiny flares, almost simultaneous, and wondered what they were, and whether they represented the deaths of some friends.
USS Apache
No one in CIC had seen exactly what happened, but some twelve thousand kilometers distant were two slowly expanding clouds of debris, the remains of the USS Sprague and the Chinese frigate Hudie Shuang Dao.
Two more. The wounded frigate Ramage was closing on the Maqiang. Apache was rushing to help her, but it would be an hour before she could help.
Ramage and Maqiang met without subtlety. Ramage fired her repaired laser cannon into Maqiang,
which conducted a rapid turnover and fired her own main laser into Ramage.
A great chunk of the American frigate’s hull tore away, and Neil heard Lieutenant Jackson transmit, “I’m sorry. Tell them we did our best,” and Ramage came apart into six large pieces and many smaller ones.
Unfettered by enemy fire, Maqiang thrust away.
“We can catch them, but they’ll be in range of the herd when we do,” Ensign Cohen said, her voice barely above a whisper. “We just don’t have the remass to get to them any sooner.”
We did our best, but it wasn’t enough, Neil thought. Even if the herd scatters, they’ll be able to tag some of the big troopships. Already, several space trains were slowing, and their captains announced an intention to ram any enemy ship they could get close to. A million-to-one-shot against warships, Neil knew. Thousands of troops …
CSS Weisheng
Rear Admiral Kong Ruchang was a self-assured man, his confidence built on prior victories against his country’s enemies. He had faith in his abilities and believed on a deep level he was part of his homeland’s success. So the message from Beijing offended him on a deep level.
YOUR NEW PRIMARY OBJECTIVE IS TO PRESERVE YOUR FORCE.
If only the damned comm buoys had failed! I have spent so many lives and ships, and they send me this. His commanders were operating off old information, from before he had achieved the breakthrough. He wanted to argue, to tell them he was on the cusp of a great victory, a suitable revenge against the Americans for what happened at Kennedy Station. Under normal circumstances he would have both the seniority and cachet to contest the orders, but a message and a response would take half an hour to bounce between the stars. By then, the battle will have turned in one direction, or another, and I will have defied my superiors. And what they’ve done to Captain Qin’s reputation, all because she didn’t take her crew on a suicide mission …
Defiance would mean the end of his contribution to the defense of China and its people. My country will need me in the future, so I must comply.
