Center of Gravity

by Ian Douglas

  Gray speared a Toad with a particle beam. The bolt didn’t penetrate the enemy’s shields, but the Turusch fighter twisted away . . . and moved directly into the path of a heavier bolt from one of the Remington’s point-defense particle cannon. A kilometer away, Tucker turned hard as a Toad pursued her. Gray tried to match the turn, but had to break off as the Remington grew huge just ahead. For an instant, the replenishment ship’s hull blurred past Gray’s awareness. He caught a glimpse of one of the big SKR–7 Scrounger auxiliaries mounted on her aft spine above her drive containment spheres, like an enormous insect; the mobile disassembler had been savaged by Turusch fire, was gaping open and leaking a glittering spray of frozen water and volatiles. Remington’s forward shield had taken damage as well, but his fleeting glimpse showed no damage to the turning hab modules, and Remington’s point-defense weapons were much in evidence, lashing out at the closest Toad fighters and burning them down.

  The enemy fighters pulled back then, apparently breaking off.

  “We got them!” Collins yelled. “We’ve got them on the run!”

  “I’m dry on KK!” Kirkpatrick yelled. “Permission to go to Krait-knife!”

  “Negative, Eleven,” Allyn called. “Negative on Krait-knife!”

  “Krait-knife” was slang for using the nuclear-tipped VG–10 missiles at ranges of less than fifty kilometers—virtually point-blank range. Commander Allyn had forbidden the maneuver either because Kirkpatrick was too close to his target and a shot at that range might damage him or, more likely, he was too close to the injured Remington, and might score own-goal damage.

  But the Turusch appeared to be wavering . . . then scattering. There were five Toads left, now . . . then four . . .

  . . . And then the survivors were accelerating in toward Al–01, fleeing at fifty thousand gravities.

  “Let them go!” Allyn called. “Repeat! Let them go! Don’t get drawn out by them.”

  Gray’s heart was pounding, his hands slick with sweat. They’d lost seven fighters in exchange for sixteen . . . a decent enough kill ratio of better than two to one, certainly, but not one that they could maintain for long.

  The enemy had a lot more fighters in reserve. . . .

  CIC, TC/USNA CVS America

  Alphekka System

  1705 hours, TFT

  “All capital ships in the battlegroup possessing long-range offensive armament report that they’re ready to fire, Admiral,” Commander Craig told him. “Fields of fire are clear, and the target is locked in. All personnel report they are ready for firing.”

  “Very well,” Koenig said. “Make to all commands. Commence fire.”

  Across the battlegroup, railguns accelerated kinetic-kill slugs at up to five hundred gravities. Koenig, sitting now in his CIC acceleration couch, felt the heavy lurch as America kicked two projectiles down her spinal launch tubes.

  Every action has an opposite and equal reaction; a pair of kilogram masses hurtling from America’s launch tubes gave a substantial nudge to the far more massive America, enough, at any rate, to be felt. Any time capital ships began slinging metal around like this, their crews had to strap in. Less massive ships with longer launch rails, like the railgun cruiser Kinkaid, could accelerate rounds to much higher velocities and, as a result, suffered significantly harder recoils.

  The different lengths of launch rails throughout the fleet meant different velocities for the projectiles, which, in turn, meant a long temporal footprint for the impacts. Incoming rounds would begin striking Al–01 and nearby targets within another two hours, and would continue striking them for another half hour after that.

  For that reason, the higher-velocity rounds, like those from Kinkaid, were targeted against enemy warships, since the fastest rounds would arrive first. Slower-moving rounds, like those from America—which had launch rails only two hundred meters long—would arrive long after the Turusch vessels had begun to move out of the way.

  Instead, they were aimed at Al–01, the massive space factory in orbit around the Alphekkan double star, which couldn’t change course or speed and which would, therefore, be precisely at the point America’s targeting AIs predicted it would be 138 minutes after firing.

  The barrage caused two logistical difficulties, but had been timed and tuned to keep those to a minimum. Each KK launch had the effect of slightly slowing each firing ship, in accord with Newton’s Third Law. Since each ship type had launch rails of different lengths—America’s, designed for launching manned fighters at low accelerations, were only two hundred meters long, while Kinkaid’s were half a kilometer—each ship was decelerated at a different rate, less for massive, short-railed ships like America, more for less massive, longer-railed ships like Kinkaid.

  The result was that the battlegroup was scattering again . . . not by much, but enough that the different fleet elements were forced to maneuver in order to regain a semblance of their original flight formation.

  The second problem was that America needed to bring some of the CSP fighters back on board—specifically the Starhawks of VFA–36 and VFA–44. Both squadrons had expended a considerable percentage of their Krait missiles and KK Gatling ammunition in the short, sharp firefight around the Remington, and they needed to re-arm.

  America had answered the second problem by matching it with the first. The carrier had cut all acceleration, so that she could take the Dragonfires and the Death Rattlers back on board. The other squadrons flying close CSP around the main fleet had not been in the fight, and would continue holding position around the battlegroup’s defensive sphere. The other capital ships would use America as a steady-velocity marker, and would form on her.

  Remington, Koenig noted, had taken some damage in the fight—a couple of near misses by thermonuclear warheads and Turusch particle beams. Several of her shields were down, she was leaking reaction mass from her shield cap, and one of her SKR–7s, mounted on her hull, had been badly damaged. The shield cap leak was the most serious problem; Remington’s CO had deployed nanorepair robots to fix the leak. Other damage could be repaired later, though the SKR might well be a total loss.

  That wasn’t an insurmountable problem so far as the battlegroup went, however. The fleet still had seven operational Scroungers, more than enough to meet battlegroup needs for the foreseeable future.

  And Remington had now rejoined the CBG and was under the umbrella of America’s CSP. There didn’t appear to be any further threats out there in the making, not until the battlegroup made its close passage of the Turusch factory some three and a half hours from now.

  “Admiral Koenig?” the space boss’s voice said over the shipboard link. “The first fighter is coming in now, sir.”

  “Thanks, Randy,” Koenig replied. “Let me know when the last one is on board.”

  “Right.”

  Commander Avery, right now, had the tough job on board the carrier—sorting out the survivors from twenty-four space fighters, some of them damaged and limping, and bringing them all in for a safe trap on board the carrier. He did not envy the man his job.

  Koenig checked the tactical records. The cost of the fighter action had been heavy. Four fighters from VFA–44 had been lost—Canby, Walsh, Tomlinson, and Dulaney. Three had been lost from VFA–36—Burke, Mayall, and Zebrowski—plus one streaker.

  Fighters could be replaced; that was the purpose of the CBG’s lone manufactory ship, the AVM Richard Arkwright. Experienced pilots could not. Basic pilot training could be downloaded through a recruit’s implants, but it still required experience and the relentless accumulation of flight-time hours to become proficient. The combat losses, both at Arcturus and here at Alphekka, would be damned tough to make up.

  And what Koenig had in mind after Operation Crown Arrow would require lots of experienced pilots.

  The single streaker—thank God there hadn’t been more of them—was a particularly vexing problem.

&
nbsp; “Commander Craig?” he asked.

  “Yessir.”

  “That one streaker . . . from VFA–36.”

  “Lieutenant Rafferty, Admiral.”

  It was tougher when they had a name.

  “Is he alive?”

  “ ‘She,’ Admiral. Alma Rafferty. Telemetry from Rattler Five has ceased. We don’t know if she’s alive or not. Commander Corbin reports he’s ready to launch a capture mission.”

  Corbin was the CO of the DinoSARs, one of America’s SAR squadrons.

  Koenig thought for a moment.

  Streaker was fighter slang for a ship that had been damaged but not destroyed, and which was traveling on a high-speed vector away from battlespace, unable to decelerate or to change course. That sort of thing happened in fighter combat a lot. Grav-singularity projectors were particularly prone to crippling damage if a fighter was badly smashed about, and a fighter simply couldn’t carry enough reaction mass to use conventional thrusters to slow or change course.

  Carriers carried SAR tugs for this purpose, search-and-rescue craft with powerful projectors, able to match outbound vectors with damaged fighters, latch on, and drag them home. America possessed two SAR squadrons, the DinoSARs and the Jolly Blacks, each with six tugs; and the two Marine assault carriers, Nassau and Vera Cruz, each carried one more SAR squadron.

  That was a total of twenty-four tugs. In another few hours, the fighter squadrons of all three carriers were going to be locked in an epic furball, and losses—including streakers—might be high. Koenig had to decide whether to dispatch one of America’s SAR tugs after Rafferty’s damaged fighter. The longer he waited, the farther Rafferty would be from the fleet, the tougher it would be to catch her, and the longer it would take to bring her back, if she could be found in all that emptiness at all.

  If he dispatched a SAR tug, though, that tug might not rejoin the fleet for many hours, possibly days. Worse, since the CBG was committed to a high-speed pass of Al–01, it was possible that tactical necessity would force them to keep going and jump into Alcubierre Drive after completing that pass. That would doom both Rafferty and the five-man crew of a tug when the vessels were left behind.

  The conservative play was to preserve his assets this early in the game. Losing one pilot—who might well be dead already—was better than losing a pilot and a tug with five experienced crewmen. There were no guarantees that the CBG would survive the close passage of Al–01.

  And yet . . .

  Rear Admiral Alexander Koenig was fifty-four years old, and had been in the Navy for thirty-two of them. He’d joined as a midshipman cadet in 2372. Two years later, he’d been a very junior lieutenant j.g. on his first deployment, flying one of the old SG–12 Assassins off the star carrier Constellation. After two years of download-training at the academy, he’d been posted aboard the “Connie” just in time for the Battle of Rasalhague.

  Rasalhague—also known as Ras Alhague or Alpha Ophiuchi—was a type A5III giant forty-seven light years from Earth. The star had a companion star, Rasalhague B, 7 AUs away and with an orbital period of 8.7 years.

  There hadn’t been much there—an astronomical research station on an airless rock called Rasalhague B II. Rasalhague A was at the point of evolving off the Main Sequence, turning into a giant some twenty-five times brighter than Sol. The research station, supporting a couple of hundred astronomers and cosmologists, was there to watch the contraction of the helium core that would mark the beginning of the star’s death.

  Unknown ships had arrived suddenly and obliterated the colony. Confederation Intelligence wouldn’t learn the identity of the attackers for several years yet, but the bicolored spacecraft would turn out eventually to be those of the Turusch—that species’ first confrontation with Humankind.

  Connie and seven escorts had been at a deep-space naval base twelve light years from Rasalhague when a badly shot-up scout-courier had come in with news of the attack. Admiral Benedix had ordered the squadron in for a closer look.

  The Battle of Rasalhague had been a nasty defeat for Confederation forces. All six escorts, two cruisers and four frigates, plus a stores ship, had been destroyed before they could slip back into their Alcubierre FTL bubbles. The Constellation had escaped—barely—but she’d lost two of her three hab modules in the process, and nearly two thousand members of her crew; another five hundred had suffered severe radiation burns and died before the ship could get to a safe port.

  Benedix had been court-martialed upon his return to Fleet Base Mars. He’d delayed the jump to metaspace in order to recover a dozen tugs hauling in disabled fighters. Because of that delay, a quartet of thermonuclear warheads had gotten through the point-defense fire, and the cruisers Milwaukee and Vancouver, which had closed with the Connie to provide covering fire against the oncoming waves of Toads, had been destroyed.

  Benedix was acquitted by the court-martial board. After beating off that first wave of fighters, there’d been no way of knowing that there were so many more coming in behind the first. Benedix had ordered the radars shut down to avoid giving away their position. The board decided he’d done everything possible, given the bad hand he’d been forced to play.

  But he never commanded a fleet again.

  The Battle of Rasalhague was just one of the long string of defeats suffered by Confederation forces early in the war, and a relatively minor one at that. But it held special significance for Koenig.

  Lieutenant j.g. Koenig had been one of the pilots rescued by Benedix’s delay. Those old Assassins were no match for Turusch Toads. During the first encounter, every SG–12 in two fighter squadrons had been destroyed or sent tumbling helplessly into the void. The young Koenig spent a very cold and lonely couple of hours with no power and a dying life support system, until the tug pulled him into Connie’s single remaining landing bay.

  Benedix had gambled that there were no more nearby enemy fighters tracking the fleet, and he’d lost. Twelve pilots had been saved . . . but 4,500 people had died, counting the crews on board those cruisers. “Benedix Exchange” became a catchphrase throughout the Navy and the Confederation Marines, meaning to save a little by losing a lot.

  And ever since, Koenig had wondered what he would have done in that nightmare situation.

  This situation was different, of course, but he was facing the distinct possibility of having to employ a Benedix Exchange of his own.

  But the deciding factor was Koenig’s own experience. He’d been in the position of Alma Rafferty—alone in a crippled hulk, tumbling helplessly through the night, alone in a way that very few people could begin to imagine.

  “Tell Commander Corbin to dispatch a SAR. Make sure the crew is volunteer-only . . . and make sure they know we might not be able to wait for them.”

  “Yes, sir. I was told volunteers are already standing by.”

  Koenig nodded. He had a good crew, devoted to one another.

  And that, he believed, was the most powerful asset he possessed in the fleet.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  25 February 2405

  Squadron Common Area, TC/USNA CVS America

  Alphekka System

  1722 hours, TFT

  “Are you okay?” Gray asked her.

  Shay Ryan turned away from the viewall, her arms still crossed, hands tightly clutching opposite elbows. Ryan was trembling inside and she couldn’t stop it. She despised showing weakness, any weakness at all. . . .

  “I’m fine,” she said. “I’m . . . fine.”

  Gray nodded at the viewall. “The Admiral takes good care of his people.”

  The screen currently showed a view of the America from a camera mounted on the outer rim of the shield cap, looking aft. One of the Brandt space tugs, a clumsy-looking assembly of spheres and canisters and folded grappling legs that gave it the look of an enormous mechanical insect, was emerging from Auxiliary Docking Bay One.
America had, once again, cut her deceleration, in order to launch the SAR recovery vehicle.

  “Who is it going after?” Ryan asked.

  “Not sure,” Gray replied. “Scuttlebutt says it’s a streaker from the Rattlers. Lafferty? Rafferty? Something like that. Anyway, it wasn’t someone from the Dragonfires, and the Death Rattlers was the only other squadron turning and burning with us out there.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Hey!” Gray said, grinning. “We have, what? Something like two hundred fighter pilots on board America, counting the reserves? I can’t know all of them.”

  “Fewer than that,” Ryan replied slowly, “after that last fight. But . . . I know what you mean. I don’t play well with others either.”

  “There is that,” Gray said, the smile vanishing. “Not what I meant, but . . . yeah.”

  On the screen, the SAR tug was accelerating under thrusters. The ugly little craft had singularity projectors far stronger than those mounted on fighters, drives powerful enough to stop a fighter in mid-tumble, bring it to a halt, and boost it back to the star carrier. Those faceted globes at the bow that looked so eerily like the compound eyes of an ungainly insect were particularly powerful field compensators, which extended the free-fall zone far enough that tug and fighter together wouldn’t be torn apart by tidal effects. SAR tugs, though, had to be very careful about switching those projectors on in the vicinity of a larger ship to avoid twisting part of another vessel into unrecognizable wreckage. The usual safety radius was two kilometers, twice the length of the America.

  “Do you think they’ll find the pilot?”

  “I imagine so. They wouldn’t launch a SAR tug if they didn’t have a good idea where the streaker was. Especially while we’re still in the middle of a combat op.”

  “All that emptiness . . .” She felt cold. Terrified . . .

  “Well, they found us okay when we streaked at Alchameth. Right?” He looked concerned, and reached out to touch her arm. “You sure you’re okay, Shay?”