by Ian Douglas
At five hundred gravities, it would take another 106 minutes to slow, then reverse course, by which time they would have traveled almost an AU beyond the Al–01 factory. The return trip, accelerating half of the way, then decelerating to match Al–01’s orbital velocity around its suns, would take another two and a half hours.
It would take almost four and a half hours, total, to return to the factory and resume the battle, so demanded the cold and unyielding dictates of the laws of physics.
On the other hand, he could order the CBG to begin accelerating instead. In a bit under fifteen hours they would reach 99.9 percent of the speed of light, at which point they could drop into Alcubierre Drive and slip into the safety of metaspace.
Close passage of Al–01 had expended a lot of the battlegroup’s available munitions. That would be an issue as well.
Five hours in or fifteen hours out. Either way, the other enemy ships in the system would wait to ascertain what CBG–18 was doing—attacking or retreating—and then begin closing in from every direction. Koenig saw no way to avoid another major battle, and expendables were already running tight.
One thing was clear. If he elected to get out of Dodge, he would lose some more pilots. Telemetry from the remnants of the four squadrons showed several of the ships were damaged. They might not be able to catch up with the fleet, might not be able to weather a passage of the protoplanetary disk in pursuit.
Besides, there was still that one streaker lost in the Remington scrap earlier, Rafferty, and the crew of the SAR tug sent to get her. And Lieutenant Schiere, who might still be alive somewhere out there in the emptiness.
If they retreated, they would lose everything won so far. If they returned to finish it, they might still lose . . . but at least there would be a chance of retrieving the MIA pilots.
“CAG?” he said, deciding.
“Yes, Admiral!”
“Commence immediate launch of all remaining fighter squadrons, please. Pass the word to the Marine carriers to launch as well. We’re going back, and the fighters will lead the way.”
“Aye, aye, Admiral.”
“How long to get all of America’s fighters spaceborne?”
“Ten minutes, Captain. We only have four squadrons remaining, and three of them are loaded, set and ready for drop in bays one, two, and three.”
Was there a hint of recrimination there?
Koenig chose not to notice if there was. “Once the fresh squadrons are away, bring in the fighters that are out there now.” Those that are still alive . . .
“Yes, sir.”
“Captain Buchanan?”
“Sir.”
“As soon as we have those fighters back on board, you may resume deceleration. Plan for turnover in two hours, and a return to Al–01.”
“Yes, sir!”
There was no cheering in the CIC, but he sensed a change, a lightening of spirits. Tensions had run high before and during the close passage. Now, though, they simply wanted to finish what they’d begun.
And to do that, they would have to return.
Another faint shudder rippled through America’s hull.
Gray
VFA–44
Alphekka System
2022 hours, TFT
“Orders coming through, people,” Allyn said. “We’re going back. They’re getting set to launch the Rattlers, the Tigers, and the Reapers now, and the Impactors will follow as soon as they’re loaded into the bays.”
Gray had expected as much. There were only the four fighters left in VFA–44—himself, Commander Allyn, Ben Donovan, and Collins. All the rest were dead, and the realization had left Gray feeling lost, a little stunned. Perhaps Koenig would order the handful of surviving fighters back on board.
“Heads up! We have incoming!”
Gray pulled his Starhawk into a tight turn, slipping once again out from behind the comforting shadow of America’s shield cap. Koenig might be about to bring them back on board, but until he gave that order, Gray and the others were still on CSP. The enemy had finally pulled himself together and dispatched a flight of Toad fighters to pursue the CBG. The remnants of the four CSP squadrons would have to hold them off until fresh fighters could be launched.
He accelerated with the others to thirty thousand gravities, pushing hard enough to wipe out his shared vector with the fleet through the protoplanetary disk and begin piling on velocity in the opposite direction, back toward Al–01.
It was fourteen fighters against fifty, impossible odds.
But the Toads would know they’d been in a fight.
“Hey, Prim?” The voice coming over his com link was familiar. The transmitter was identified on his display as Impact Seven. “That was a brilliant maneuver you pulled back there with the Remington. I, ah, just wanted to let you know.”
“Thanks.” He didn’t think he knew anyone in the Impactors. “Who is this?”
“Frank Carstairs. We spent a fun evening ashore last month, at a joint called Sarnelli’s. With the bugs, remember?”
He did. He’d forgotten that Carstairs was one of the Impactors. VFA–31, he saw, was down to just five ships.
“I remember. I’m glad you’re still here.”
“Well, that might not be the case for much longer . . .”
“Bottle it, people. You two can buy each other a drink when we get back to Earth.”
Allyn was right. It wasn’t good to talk about what might be about to happen. Focus on the positive. . . .
“Deal,” Gray said. “See you at Sarnelli’s, Carstairs, and the drinks are on me.”
Missiles were reaching in from the oncoming Toads, bright points of light accelerating toward the battlegroup.
“Let’s give the big boys some cover,” Allyn called. “Fox Two!”
“Copy, Dragon leader. Fox Two!”
Sandcaster rounds lanced out across the fast-dwindling space between the two groups, detonating in rapid succession and hurling high-velocity clouds of sand into the enemy missile’s paths. Flashes of nuclear fire illuminated the dark ships of both squadrons.
Gray lined up his targeting cursor on the icon representing a Toad ten thousand kilometers ahead. “Target lock!” he cried. “And . . . Fox One!”
And then the two groups of fighters interpenetrated, passing through each other. Gray pivoted his fighter to track a Toad coming down his starboard side, firing his PBP, sending to rapid-pulse bolts into the enemy. The first shot overloaded the Toad’s screens and shields; the second, close behind, burned through blue and black hull metal and slagged down the drive system buried within. The molecule-sized black hole running the Toad’s quantum power tap broke free, tunneling through the fighter in a searing burst of X-ray and gamma radiation.
And the final battle for Alphekka was joined.
Chapter Twenty-Six
25 February 2405
Gray
VFA–44
Alphekka System
2024 hours, TFT
Human Starhawk fighters had the clear advantage over Turusch Toads when it came to maneuverability, but the Toads, massing more than twice as much, were tougher and they had more punch behind their particle beams. There was no way that fourteen Starhawks were going to stop fifty Toads in a head-to-head fight.
Fortunately for the Starhawks, the Toads weren’t interested in them. If the capital ships of CBG–18 were destroyed, the fighters would be helpless, cut off and trapped. The Toads ignored the battlegroup’s fighter screen and kept closing on the capital ships, continuing to launch volleys of long-range missiles as they advanced.
The battlegroup, however, had its own heavy defenses up. The heavy cruiser Valley Forge, the missile ship Maat Mons, and the frigates Schofield and Miller had dropped back to the rear of the battlegroup formation, positioning themselves in order to give as many of their weapons turrets
and missile bays as possible a clear field of fire aft. As the enemy fighters bore in, the four ships, operating in their anti-fighter mode, threw up a withering fire of nuclear-tipped missiles, charged particle beams, and point-defense weapons. The Toads had lost eight of their number as they briefly interpenetrated with the Starhawk formation; now, more Toads erupted in stark flashes of plasma and radiation, or crumpled into their own onboard singularities, or simply vanished in the megaton-blossoms of nuclear fire as the barrage from the Maat Mons reached them.
The Confederation fighters were coming in behind the Toads, and suddenly surrounding space was more than usually deadly for the thin-skinned Starhawks, this time as they entered a volume of space swept and crisscrossed by fire from their own side. Krait missiles and the Maat’s heavier Vulcan missiles wouldn’t deliberately lock on to Confederation ships—they were smart missiles, after all, possessing low-level AIs at their controls—but expanding clouds of plasma at star-core temperatures, sleeting storms of radiation, and hurtling chunks of high-velocity debris did not possess the same sensibilities or care.
Commander Allyn’s Starhawk hurtled through the fringe of an expanding nuclear fireball, emerging an instant later in a helpless tumble.
“The Skipper’s gone streaker!” Donovan yelled. “Log her vector before we lose her!”
“I’ve got her!” Collins replied. “Watch out for that Toad at your low twelve!”
“Got him! Got him!”
Gray pulled up and back, clearing the kill zone astern of the fleet. Without forward shields, he wouldn’t have survived for three seconds in that soup of energy and debris. Out here, there was still a threat from random bits of dust and meteoric particles as the battlegroup continued to plow through the protoplanetary disk, but the actual disk density was relatively low. It was only from a few astronomical units off that it appeared to merge into a single, solid ring.
One Krait missile left. Just one.
Make it count!. . .
His AI pointed out a lone Toad, moving at high acceleration out and around the CBG’s flank. The pilot—no, pilots, since the Turusch always worked in pairs—were trying to avoid the death trap at the battlegroup’s rear and come in from around the fleet’s side.
Gray gave a silent command, and his Starhawk stooped after the enemy ship, accelerating hard. It was a long way off . . . forty thousand kilometers or a little more, but he was able to get a target lock, then fire.
His last missile streaked toward the enemy at two thousand gravities.
Collins
VFA–44
Alphekka System
2037 hours, TFT
The Toads, what was left of them, were fleeing, turning away from the Confederation battlegroup and accelerating back toward Al–01 and the Turusch ships remaining there. Pulling around in a hard, tight turn, Collins struggled to close with one of the retreating Toads, dropping onto its tail and opening up with a volley of KK fire.
“I’m on him! I’m on his six!” she yelled over the tac channel. “Target locked . . . kill!”
Less than ten kilometers ahead, the Toad exploded, coming apart in tumbling, jagged pieces. Collins was traveling too quickly for merely human reflexes to act. Her AI took control and pulled her onto a new course to avoid the hurtling debris. . . .
She hit . . . something. . . .
Gray
VFA–44
Alphekka System
2038 hours, TFT
Sixty-three seconds after he fired his last missile, it swept in behind the lone Toad fighter and detonated, wiping the threat from the sky.
The other Starhawks, he saw, were breaking off from the engagement. There were eight of them left now, and little more they could do to protect the fleet. The fire from the four screening capital ships had killed or disabled all but ten of the remaining Toads, which were scattering now, fleeing the battlespace.
For the moment at least, the CBG was in the clear. More and more fresh fighters were streaming in from the America, the Nassau, and the Vera Cruz.
In the clear . . .
“Dragon Five is hit,” Ben Donovan called. “She’s gone streaker.”
Gray swiveled his head, searching the crowded and fire-laced sky displayed on his cockpit screens. He linked in with his in-head displays, throwing up brackets and id alphanumerics, trying to make sense out of disordered chaos.
There she was . . . leaving the battlespace at a high rate of speed. She wasn’t headed toward him, but her path wasn’t headed away, either.
“Got her,” Gray said, recording her vector for transmission back to America. “How the hell did she get that kind of speed?”
“I think she hit a Toad dust ball,” Carstairs replied.
Damn . . .
Ships, from the smallest fighters and couriers up to America herself, used projected artificial singularities to achieve high accelerations. Each projection cycle lasted only a tiny fraction of a second, just long enough to shape local space into a gravity well that pulled the projecting ship forward in free fall. The projection winked off, then winked on once more, but a little farther along as the projecting ship continued to accelerate. The trick was known as bootstrapping among gravitational-drive physicists, and was the high-tech trick that allowed a ship, even one as long and as massive as America, to accelerate at high speed, to warp space around it in an Alcubierre bubble, and even to twist space at the ship’s outer surface enough to serve as a strong defensive shield. Tricks you could play with gravity . . .
Drive singularities were the equivalent of very massive stars compressed into a tiny pocket of space. Created by directly warping the fabric of space through intense and tightly focused energy drawn from the quantum foam, they had no material existence. Usually, when the power from the quantum taps died, the singularity vanished. It was, after all, just empty space.
Once in a while, however, a drive failure resulted in a longer-lived and self-sustaining singularity. Often, as a ship traveled at high-grav acceleration, dust, gas, and debris became trapped in a kind of bent-space eddy immediately behind the singularity’s event horizon, unable to fall as that horizon continued inexorably to move away. If not cleared periodically by switching off the drives for more than their fractional-second cycle, the debris could fall into the singularity as power was switched off, and the grav field would take on a life of its own, hurtling off through space with the same velocity the fighter had possessed when the projectors failed. Called “dust balls,” they were a nuisance more than anything else, but rarely, in combat, they became a part of the debris from a dying ship, tiny vortices of intense gravitational energy, invisible, fast-moving, and deadly.
If another ship struck a large dust ball head-on, it usually meant that ship’s destruction. If a ship missed the dust ball, but by a fairly small margin, the intense gravitational slope of local space acted like a maneuvering field, whipping the incoming vessel around in a tight turn. A capital ship, generally, would be ripped apart by tidal stresses. Fighters, designed to ride curves of warped space, might survive as they slingshot around the singularity, but the pilot might not survive the centrifugal force of the turn, or the tidal stresses if his fighter passed too close to the event horizon.
Collins, evidently, had slingshot around a dust ball released by a Toad she’d killed an instant before, picking up a tremendous amount of speed in the passage. She was receding from the CBG now at a velocity of some eighty thousand kilometers per second.
“Dragon Five, this is Dragon Nine,” he called. “Do you copy?”
There was no reply. Collins might be dead or unconscious, or her fighter’s communications system might not have survived the encounter.
He couldn’t reach her AI either.
At that speed, she would be lost within the cluttered abyss of the protoplanetary disk in short order. Her fighter wasn’t giving off any signals, including IFF.
He wondered if she was still alive.
Damn, damn, damn . . .
“America, this is Dragon Nine,” he called. “I’m dry on missiles, almost dry on KK rounds. “I have Dragon Five on my display, but she won’t be there for long. I’m going to try to get her.”
There was a long pause before the voice of America’s CIC came back.
“We copy, Dragon Nine. You understand that we might not be able to come get you.”
“Copy that, America. But I’ve got a good chance to catch her.”
He was already accelerating after the tiny, fast-receding spacecraft.
Enforcer Shining Silence
Alphekka System
2040 hours, TFT
Tactician Diligent Effort at Reconciliation trembled with uncontrollable grief. The other part of itself, its literal other half, was dead, as the asteroid enforcer slowly crumpled from within. A portion of the cell from which it commanded both ship and fleet had been partially crushed, the wall smashing in and mangling Diligent Effort’s twin.
“No! No! No!” Its Mind Above was shrilling an endless mental cacophony of denial. It was becoming harder to think, harder to even consider what to do.
The Shining Silence had been crippled by multiple hits, its weapons down, its power systems failing. Diligent Effort wasn’t sure of the extent of the damage. It could no longer communicate with other Turusch on board. Too many communications links with other parts of the asteroid ship had been cut; besides, it could no longer speak, not in harmony with itself.
The Sh’daar Seed, however, remained within its Mind Below, speaking wordlessly within its thoughts.
The information from our agents within the human fleet was false. We must alert others against the possibility of deceit.
“Communications are out,” it replied aloud, struggling to focus its thoughts as a single voice, rather that blending with its twin to create a third layer of speech within the harmonics. The shrilling of its atavistic Mind Above made speech more difficult still. “You must communicate with your fellows on your own.”
