“Kind of busy here, Ty.”
She zapped another, and moved on to a fourth.
Tyber gasped. “You…just did it again.”
“Chaela, Saemar, get our best pilots in these rigs. No time to test them. We’re going up to meet our new friends and crash their party. The fixer AIs merged with the ships will help each pilot. Have the other fighters launch and sortie with us ASAP.”
Everyone stared at her, dumbfounded.
“Roger that,” Chaela said in a daze.
Saemar shook her head and snapped out of it. “You all heard the captain. Everyone pick a ride.”
Tyber kept following her, watching. Zhen stayed back, visibly shaken and frightened.
“Find something to do, Ty. Deal with it. I’m a teknomancer; I have the ability to speed up the fixers and what they can do. There’s no time to explain it all now. Maybe later. I don’t understand it all myself. I just want to get enough ships in the air to defend these bases. We can’t lose all this right before the battle begins.”
In minutes she had twenty ships. Two fighter wings.
That would have to be enough to buy them the time they needed.
And she would lead them into combat.
They punched into the air and assumed their attack formations, on a rapid course for intercept.
Only seconds and they plunged in the mix.
Twenty sleek, silver Ghost Dragons, complete with narrowed eyes and shark teeth in snarling jaws painted on their noses.
Multiple long-range missiles locked on, heading straight for them.
The Triaxians already fired.
Naero counted two hundred bogeys stacked up against them on multiple vectors. Triax Achilles-125Ds, their top-of-the-line space-superiority fighter.
Chatter from the enemy pilots, stunned at the presence of any resistance at all magically popping up from the surface.
Naero laughed. “They were certain they’d caught us napping.”
Thanks to their spy.
But they still zeroed in for the kill.
“Take out those missiles,” Naero demanded. “Then let’s get in closer and mix it up. The Ghost Dragons can take it and give it back double.”
Beams. Chaff. ECMs. Cluster anti-missile mines and evasive piloting.
Three missiles impacted on Ghost Dragon deflector screens and only took them down twenty percent.
Naero grinned as they closed with the enemy pack. “Here we go, people. Hunt ’em down.”
Chaela jumped in. “They’re overconfident. They’re still too close to each other.”
“Use it, use it,” Naero advised. “All right, new plan. Dragons Two through Eight, stick with me right down their throats. Everyone else pair off and hit their stacks from every optimal vector possible. Keep on them. Keep them busy.”
Naero led them in, accelerating to attack speed, flipping her squadron in, over, and under the lead elements.
They locked on and fired weapons at multiple targets all along the way.
Each Ghost Dragon unleashed a storm of fire and advanced ordnance.
Multiple explosions rocked the sky.
They shot through the enemy formations.
Enemy ships vanished in bursts of flame and detonations of their fuel, power cores, and ordnance.
Cries of their pilots cut off abruptly.
First contact cost Triax twenty-three fighters and a dozen more heavily damaged and pulling out.
No Ghost Dragons fell from the sky, although two were shot up pretty good, their fixers repairing the damage as they kept fighting.
But Naero saw their weakness.
Their initial shields took a beating, and most were already down by half, if not completely gone.
And it took a while to bring those shields back up, even with fixers.
Triax had enough numbers to wear them down.
“Good work Spacers. Keep at them,” Naero said.
Chaela cut in. “Sir, three wings just broke off to make a strafing run on our airfields.”
“Punch it, everyone. Break off and intercept them.”
Now they showed Triax their speed.
The Ghost Dragons shot away from Triax’s best in mid-combat and vanished, as if their foes were standing still.
Naero had improved their top speed by more than thirty percent.
They fell upon the strafers just as they began their attack runs, and put most of them down.
Only one or two got through to cause damage, and they were forced to break off or be destroyed.
Even though the enemy still held a numerical advantage, they cautiously pulled back to regroup.
That would buy the fixers and the ground crews precious minutes.
The respite did not last long. Their foes charged back in, very determined.
“Here they come again,” Saemar said.
“Copy that,” Naero said. “Check their new attack pattern.”
The fighters were now bolstered by four light strike cruisers with strange rapid-fire spinal guns. Very weird energy signatures coming from them on the scans.
And waves of ground attack bombers lurked behind their defensive screens, waiting to go in once the defending fighters got swept from the sky.
Not going to happen.
“I want those heavies. Let’s take ’em out one at a time. Swarm on them in close orb formation and pound them. Then we hit the next.”
But weird violet pulses of energy beams shot out from the triple-barreled big guns.
Some new type of enemy cannon.
Too late. One blast tore right through Naero’s shields.
At first, she thought she was a goner. Her ship would cook off in the next instant and blow her apart.
Then she dropped like a stone out of the sky, all power gone. Every system dead.
Ion disruption beam. Total energy drain. You must re-start one or both of the energy cores before we crash.
Naero struggled to merge with her ship again and do so, while it spun out of control, while enemy fighters zeroed in on her to follow her down.
While the enemy cruisers blasted more of her friends and drained their ships, sending them spinning down, helpless.
And the enemy bombers dropped down to make their runs.
She recalled a line from one of her father’s poems. Or perhaps it was one of her own.
I am a ship. My heart is a fusion core,
and I must fly or burst asunder.
After two attempts and two flare-outs, Naero merged with her core drives and re-ignited them.
She punched it, spun back around, and blasted two foes at close range, plowing through their debris.
Om sent instant commands to the onboard fixers on the other Ghost Dragons on how to effect similar repairs.
One Dragon crashed. Its pilot escaped on his gravwing.
Four others re-ignited their cores and rejoined the fight.
From the ground, more single fighters launched and paired up, going after the bombers.
More refitted fighters launched, strange designs and configurations. Five and six at a time. Then entire fighter wings of ten.
The cruisers fired rapidly, robbing defending craft of their power, but more still came on.
“All fighters within range,” Naero ordered. “Concentrate all attacks on the lead cruiser. Take them down one at at time. Ignore the fighters if possible. You fighters that are just launching, blast the rest of those bombers.”
In seconds, the lead cruiser was burning and falling out of the sky, rocked by attacks as it fell.
Suddenly it detonated in midair, taking out several ships nearby, both friend and foe.
The other three cruisers withdrew, performing a textbook fighting retreat.
Their foes had lost the element of surprise and they knew it.
Naero guessed that Spacer Intel wouldn’t find anything intact from the wreck of the downed cruiser concerning that new enemy ion disruption gun.
To her knowledge, no one else had such an a
dvanced weapon. Not even Spacer Intel.
Where had Triax obtained or developed such an advanced piece of hardware? It sure didn’t sound like them.
And even worse, if it worked equally as well on larger warships, that could be a definite game changer in the battles to come.
Capital ships suddenly robbed of all power at the height of a key engagement? That would surely give Triax the advantage, and victory after victory. It could overturn the slight tek lead that Spacers always took for granted.
More Alliance fighters swarmed up from the ground. Spacer pilots, miners, even a few newly arrived Matayans.
The enemy stealth ships retreated outside of the atmosphere and jumped, even as the Joshua Tech warships closed in to intercept.
But the point had been made.
The enemy could slip in and hit them anywhere, at any time, even in the rear areas where they thought they were safe.
That would require more of their new fighter wings to be spread out and remain within range to defend their key areas and bases.
Naero shook her head. Easy come, easy go.
And this was all just a taste of what was to come. This fight was just a mere skirmish.
49
Two standard hours later, the Matayan Fleet under Emperor Mellis Tarret VI hit the Alliance’s right flank hard, coming at them head on.
Matayans killing Matayans on either side.
Naero watched the opening battle unfold. Several ships on fire within minutes. Waves of fighters from both sides sweeping in several directions like flying insects at war.
Yet she and all the Alliance forces remained very aware of the larger Triaxian force positioning itself around them, jockeying for optimal vectors.
The Matayan fight was just a feint, an opening salvo–a sideshow, meant to distract and keep them busy.
That could not be their focus.
Admiral Joshua, Klyne, and Aunt Sleak adjusted their elements to counter the enemy’s shifting strategy and tactics.
The Matayan Emperor drove toward Adrin’s flagship, bent on snuffing out the Prime Minister’s rebellion.
Yet he over-extended his line of advance in doing so, and called his reserves under Prince Nellis II. A rash attempt to finish things decisively.
Adrin called in Ellis’s attack wings. Together they jammed up the emperor’s superior numbers and cut them to pieces at close range.
Then the Gigacorps unleashed their main assault.
Hundreds of ships, massed in precise formations.
Wave after wave arcing and slicing through the Alliance’s weak left flank.
The miners and their battered ships did their best to hold the line.
Up close, the invaders quickly found themselves in a cloud of small ships, bombs, drones, close-range missiles, and mines shot straight at them. Several attackers took heavy damage at the outset.
Even worse, key warships would suddenly lose their shields, or all power, or their weapons went dead at crucial moments.
Shalaen’s cosmic powers might not be limitless, but she used them sparingly to affect the outcomes of key engagements.
Any ship too damaged to keep fighting was towed back toward the shipyards, where clouds of teks and fixers swarmed over them, trying to set them right.
After a few smaller enemy vessels were taken over and towed away, the enemy pulled back and changed tactics. They paid too high a price for a direct assault.
Triax massed its big ships further out, safely away from the defender’s close-in strategies, and punched at them with their big guns.
Aunt Sleak cut in over the com. “We can’t allow that. Close with them. They can stay out there and blast us all day.”
“Agreed,” Admiral Joshua said.
“Let’s take the fight to them,” Klyne said.
The fleets closed again, under heavy fire from all directions.
Naero commanded The Brightstar, leading her sortie of two dozen fast-attack cruisers and destroyers on a strafing vector from above the battle, slashing across the entire enemy line.
She’d pulled her command and crew together so quickly that there wasn’t time to learn anyone’s names. So many new faces, but everyone did their best to work together under duress.
Screens of starfighters protected the Alliance Fleets from several vectors, including waves of Ghost Dragons and other refitted fighters.
They concentrated rapid-fire on the Triaxian main ships as they passed, disrupting shields and softening up the heavies. Their only protections their speed, optimized shielding, and heavy fighter screens.
Four enemy strike carriers suddenly jumped dangerously close to the battle. A gutsy, canny move for Triax.
Had they jumped in too close to other main ships or the planet, they would have been destroyed.
But now they could launch enough fighters right on top of the defenders to overwhelm.
“All ships. Change of plans,” Naero said. “Form up on my mark in a Bravo-X-ray-1 formation. Concentrate all batteries on those new carriers. Take out their shields. We’ll perform a Clan Wilde Flip around them and blast their engines and power cores from behind.”
One of her cruiser captains cut in. “Captain Maeris, we’re taking heavy fire to our rear. Enemy battleships and several other destroyers turning our way. We’ve got multiple incoming fighter wings.”
“We’ll have a lot more if those four carriers launch. Get in close and pour it on those strikers. Their big ships won’t target us for fear of hitting their own.”
Another tactical option presented itself.
“Send all of our fighters in to jam up those launch tubes,” she said. “Shoot micro-missiles and bombs down each one to clog them up.”
Now her XO protested. “Captain, we can’t lose our fighter escort. The enemy will be all over us in minutes. That’s insane!”
“Just do it! Obey my commands.”
“Yes, sir,” the XO said. “Fighter wings on it.”
Naero led her sortie in at full attack speed, pummeling the first two carriers and then the pair to the rear, disrupting their shields.
Their fighters swarmed in concentrating missiles on the launching tubes and drop bays.
Intense enemy fire from the Triaxian battleships blasted one cruiser and two of Naero’s destroyers to burning wreckage. A stray shot even struck one of their own carriers, causing heavy damage.
Triax sought to take them down, no matter the cost.
They had more ships. The Alliance did not.
“Everyone hold on. Hard about and flip the strike force over on our heads. Fire up their tails as we’re still breaking away from them.”
It was a Wilde move, used all the time by fighters, but Clan Wilde was the first to perfect it with light warships during the Second Spacer War.
They pulled heavy G-forces and the ship’s structures groaned and strained, but they flipped end over end like gaming tiles and fired straight into the carrier engines and cores as they did.
Two of her ships collided, causing heavy damage.
But one carrier blew up, the other three caught fire, and one listed badly, all in a matter of seconds. Their gamble paid off.
“Hard spin aft over head and come about,” Naero said. “Fire at will. Boost the engines and keep those carriers between us and their big guns. Call our fighters back before we’re cut to pieces.”
Her ship rocked hard under multiple enemy hits. Shields down thirty percent.
Her strike force took a pounding.
Yet they blew up two more of the carriers and left the fourth a burning wreck.
They shot away to regroup.
She lost five ships total. Down to nineteen.
She noticed something else.
The enemy wasn’t taking any chance on any ships coming back.
They had noticed warships re-configured by the fixers and returning to the battle in a matter of hours or even minutes.
Now any ship left adrift was set off with charges or blown apart entirely by
missile frigates.
The fixers would have fewer wrecks to reconfigure.
Aunt Sleak cut in. “Nice job on those carriers, Captain. Regroup and assist Admiral Joshua. Vector in on Point Z-333 Gamma and break up that knot of dreadnaughts. They’re cutting Joshua’s ships to pieces.”
More blips on the horizon.
Three more enemy attack waves on the way.
And they couldn’t even contain the forces they were up against now.
“Admiral Sleak–”
“We see them. Take out what we can before they get here. Keep fighting. No let-up.”
“Yes, sir. Will do.”
50
Admiral Joshua stood in a very bad way.
Naero’s strike force swept in to bust things up.
“All ships,” Naero commanded. “Bravo-Romeo-2 dual ring formation. Ten in front, nine behind. Vector all shields full forward. We’re going to punch at each of those enemy dreadnaughts until they go down. As many as we can.
“We’ll get bloody. Anyone takes too much damage, break off and get the hell out. Try to make it back to the shipyards to re-configure. No heroic suicides. We can’t afford to lose any more ships. Rejoin the fight when you can.”
The strategy was brutally simple.
Ignoring all enemy attacks, they jumped on the cluster of six dreadnaughts, spinning around them, concentrating all direct fire on one ship at a time until they either destroyed it or took it out of the fight.
Naero lost one more cruiser from several direct hits from big guns on the way in.
Down to eighteen ships, shrinking to two rings of nine.
All eighteen rapid-fire spinal guns and secondary batteries pulverized the first dreadnaught in moments.
But four of her ships were forced to flee. One got swarmed on by enemy fighters and didn’t make it.
Two rings of seven. They kept at the second dreadnaught.
It took them precious seconds longer to disable it, but that took finally some heat off of Admiral Joshua.
Enemy fighters and smaller warships hemmed them in, trying to cut them off.
Naero lost five more ships. Two destroyed, three fleeing.
Spacer Clans Adventure 1: Naero's Run Page 35
