As the Pfelung fighters were mounting their attack, the Cumberland had continued to accelerate, her main sublight drive firewalled. Knowing that the cruiser was busy dealing with fourteen dazzlingly evasive fighters, Max ordered that the destroyer get as close to the cruiser as possible as fast as possible.
Ordinarily, the destroyer would fire its pulse cannons, helping to confuse the targeting scanners for the cruiser’s pulse cannons. As it was, Krag weapons were attempting to engage the Pfelung fighters skimming between the cruiser’s primary defense zones. It would only be a matter of a few more seconds, though, before some smart Krag figured out that the destroyer was a major threat and manually redirected the fire of at least one of the pulse cannon batteries from futile efforts to keep up with the fighters to firing on the far less elusive destroyer.
“Threat receiver just started going wild, Skipper,” Bartoli declared. “Looks like pulse cannon and missile targeting scanners trying to get a lock.” So much for a few seconds.
“Countermeasures?” Max probed, turning his head in the direction of that console.
That officer was already furiously working with his back room to defeat the Krag scanners and buy a little more time for his shipmates. Sauvé said, “I can give you ten seconds, maybe twelve; then they’ll get burn-through and have us like a bug on a pin.”
“Carry on, then. That’s all I’m going to need. Weapons, set missiles in tubes one and two for simultaneous detonation, nostril attack.”
“Simultaneous detonation, nostril profile, aye.”
Having so far evaded the Krag defense systems, all fourteen Pfelung fighters fired two missiles each. Their minutely staggered firing intervals were chosen in conjunction with the slightly differing ranges of the fighters to result in all twenty-eight missiles arriving and detonating within microseconds of each other.
All scored direct hits. The Pfelung missiles were small, elusive, and agile. All but three penetrated the Krag point defense grid and exploded their comparatively small 31.3-kiloton, fusion-boosted fission warheads. Greatly attenuated by the Krag deflectors, the explosions were not sufficient to destroy the cruiser. In fact, they were not enough to inflict any structural damage on it at all.
But they were enough to create an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) of sufficient intensity to trip the protective circuitry designed to prevent nearby nuclear explosions from causing EMP damage to the sensor array used by zone and point defense systems for the cruiser’s forward section. These were the sensors that told the ship’s computer the location of incoming ships and missiles near the forward area of the ship, as well as let it know when a warhead was detonating near the ship, so the system could surge power to the deflectors to counteract the force of the explosion.
No one, least of all the humans who had been fighting them for more than three decades, would accuse the Krag of being fools. Accordingly, the EMP protection system was not designed to trip when a nuclear weapon detonated in the vicinity of the ship, in which case it would leave the vessel vulnerable, but only when hit by extremely powerful EMP from very close.
In addition, the system was designed to reset itself automatically and to do so in the shortest time possible while still allowing for multistage detonations, residual and reflected radiation effects, and similar events—just over five seconds. For those seconds, the defenses for the forward one-third of the Krag cruiser would be blind. In most contexts, five seconds isn’t very long.
In space warfare, five seconds is a lifetime.
As the fighters were pulling screaming, hard G turns through the now inert defenses of the forward section of the cruiser and clearing its vicinity as fast as possible, the Cumberland had continued to close on the cruiser at the best speed it could make.
Countermeasures yelled, “Cruiser’s targeting scanners just achieved burn-through.” Those scanners were mounted on retractable masts all around the ship and had not been damaged by the fighters. “They’ll have a lock in about four seconds.”
Not today.
“Weapons, fire tubes one and two and reload with Ravens. Maneuvering, execute evasive Hotel Papa.”
The destroyer fired two Talon missiles toward the cruiser, then made a hard, swooping turn to carry it away from the missiles’ target and bear it toward the Union frigate, still in a desperate battle with the other cruiser. The Talons were programmed for a “nostril attack,” so named because they were aimed to fly “right up her nose,” their aiming points twenty meters apart just on either side of the point of the Krag vessel’s bow.
Three-tenths of a second before the Krag EMP protection circuits reset themselves, both 150-kiloton thermonuclear warheads exploded, easily ripping through deflectors and overcoming explosion dampeners running at their standard battle settings instead of being surged to counteract the effects of the two hydrogen bombs. Together, the bombs’ total explosive yield was nearly nineteen times that of the primitive fission weapon that had killed seventy thousand human beings 370 years before and forever inscribed in the collective memory of humankind the name “Hiroshima.”
Initially, the cruiser’s deflectors and blast suppression systems, powered by the still-operating threat sensors in those sections of the ship shielded the aft two-thirds of the vessel from the explosions, but as the forward section dissolved into dissociated highly energetic atomic nuclei and wildly careening electrons, the fireball flowed around the ship’s shielded hull, through the area previously occupied by the forward section, and into the ship’s interior, the glowing plasma consuming everything it touched and gutting the vessel.
For seven-tenths of a second, the vessel’s tough hull held together. But then, the greedy fireball ingested the intricate systems that chained and harnessed the fusion inferno at the ship’s heart, causing the cruiser’s reactor to lose containment. Union plasma met Krag plasma and, finding themselves kindred, unleashed a détente of destruction that vaporized the rest of the ship in a second explosion nearly as brilliant as the first.
There was no time to celebrate. The William Gorgas needed help and needed it immediately.
“XO,” Max said, “signal the fighters; tell them to go buster and give that other Crawfish something else to worry about. Attack Plan Papa.”
DeCosta passed on the message. The tactical display showed the icons representing the two fighter elements pulling ahead of the destroyer and making for the enemy cruiser.
“Skipper, message from the Pfelung, on Commandcom,” Said the XO.
Max looked down at the display, which was already punched into that channel: “MESSAGE ACKNOWLEDGED STOP THAT WAS REALLY FUN STOP WE ESPECIALLY LIKED THE NUCLEAR WEAPONS PART STOP LOOKING FORWARD TO FEEDING THESE OTHER KRAG TO THE WORMS STOP MESSAGE ENDS.”
“Pfelung fighter elements accelerating hard toward Hotel One.” Bartoli stated the obvious, in accordance with the age-old Navy philosophy of always announcing every material event, including those that would be evident to a reasonably intelligent toddler, lest something, someday, that required attention somehow escape notice.
The Pfelung fighters rapidly accelerated to 0.5 c and closed in on Hotel One, which emptied its missile tubes at the pennant. The frigate unleashed its point defense systems, which destroyed the Krag missiles. Then the ship fired all four of its forward missile tubes, scoring one hit that appeared to damage the enemy cruiser’s missile tubes and amidships deflector array. The Krag cruiser was, however, still able to pummel the frigate with withering pulse cannon fire at an ever-decreasing range as the cruiser’s speed advantage over the frigate began to tell.
“Pennant is taking some damage,” Bartoli announced. “I think she just lost two of her missile tubes and one of her cannon batteries. Sir, I don’t think she can take much more. A few more good hits and the pennant is history.”
“Mr. Chin, signal the pennant. Let Captain Duflot know that help is on the way. Fighters in less than thirty seconds, us about two
minutes after that.”
Chin acknowledged the order and went to work. Less than ten seconds later: “Signal from the pennant, sir. It reads ‘For God’s sake, hurry.’ ”
Any man in CIC could follow the course of the battle simply by watching the main tactical projection. The Krag vessel closed to administer the coup de grâce. Just as its main pulse cannon batteries were ready to open up on the William Gorgas at close range, the Pfelung fighters swooped in to engage the cruiser. Looking like piranha in a feeding frenzy, they came at the enemy from apparently random bearings, approaching from all directions at high speeds and following elusive, deceptive trajectories, getting within close missile range, firing, and then dodging away only to return and fire again from another direction.
By presenting the Krag with constantly shifting multiple threat vectors, the Pfelung kept the Krag point defense systems spread thin, unable to concentrate on any single ship or any single direction. And although the relatively small warheads of the Pfelung missiles did not penetrate the Krag deflectors, each detonation sapped the Krag deflector power reserves. Eventually, the reserves would be depleted and the Krag left open to destruction.
“How many missiles do those fighters carry?” DeCosta’s question echoed the one in the minds of many in CIC.
Max gave the XO a look that said that this is one of the things he was supposed to know, but he answered the question. “Twenty, each. In an internal bay to preserve stealth. Very advanced design. Those fighters with those pilots are going to make a serious difference in this war, and you can take that to the bank.”
“Skipper,” said Bartoli, “Hotel One has kicked its sublight drive up to Emergency and is trying to get away from the Pfelung fighters. Looks as though he’s…right…He’s going for the edge of the area disrupted by the Egg Scrambler, either to get away or to send an FTL transmission to his friends.”
“I guarantee it’s to get away,” said Kasparov.
“Guarantee?” Max’s question was asked in genuine curiosity, without a trace of the sarcasm that many skippers who used to be sensor officers would have loaded into those same words.
“Yes, sir. Guarantee. I’ve got a clear optical scan of his metaspacial transceiver array. It’s twelve thousand eight hundred and nineteen kills away from him. In six pieces. Looks like one of those missile hits stripped everything mounted on a good portion of his outer hull. If he’s going to talk to anyone, it’s going to be on an Einstein line. No FTL chit-chat for him until he gets back to a Krag shipyard.”
“Outstanding work, Mr. Kasparov. That’s the kind of information I can use. Maneuvering, get me within missile range of the cruiser.”
“Not an intercept course, sir?”
“Negative, Mr. LeBlanc. I’ve already eyeballed that we won’t get an intercept before he kicks in his compression drive. I need to get a couple of hits on him before he gets away.”
“Aye, sir, missile range it is.” He gave immediate orders to his men to change course in the direction he estimated would put the destroyer within missile range, then interrogated his console to produce a more precise calculation. The result was a few degrees different in both axes, and he implemented the course change.
“The fighters are keeping up with the cruiser, no problem, continuing to reduce his deflector power,” Bartoli said. “He’s down to just under 50 percent now. Sir, I know what you’re going to ask, and the answer is no. His deflectors will not be knocked down far enough for either the Pfelung or us, or both in combination, to finish him before he can engage his c drive. He’s about three minutes away from the boundary.”
“Bartoli, ninety seconds before the cruiser reaches the boundary, notify the XO. XO, when you get that notification, pass it on to the fighters with orders that they break off their attack immediately and fall back to a range of at least five hundred kills. I don’t want any of them caught in the compression field.”
Being in an area where the space–time continuum was being radically expanded or compressed could be hazardous to one’s health—that is, if one’s health required that the atomic nuclei in one’s body and in one’s ship not undergo spontaneous nuclear fission and detonate like an A-bomb.
A minute passed. The icons in the tactical display gradually changed relative position as the destroyer slowly caught up with the cruiser, proving once again the age old maxim about stern chases being long.
“Ninety seconds to boundary, sir,” Bartoli announced.
“Very well. XO, add to the warning we talked about earlier a warning that we are about to fire missiles and that they should stay clear of the attack vector. Tell them to take the usual precautions to avoid the blast. Be sure they know we’re firing Ravens, not Talons.”
The 1.5-megaton warhead of the Raven missile packed ten times the punch of the highest yield of which the Talon was capable. When a Raven was coming, you gave the blast a bit more room.
“Weapons, abbreviated firing procedure. Make weapons in tubes one and two ready in all respects and open missile doors. Your target is the Krag cruiser dead ahead. Program missiles for common point, time on target, simultaneous detonation.”
“Sir, you know that—”
“Yes, Mr. Levy,” the captain interrupted, “I know that detonating the missiles at the same time at the same place does not place the level of drain on the Krag systems that you get with two blasts in two different locations. I also know, though, that by concentrating the explosions we will get a very slight deflector penetration and cause some minimal damage to the ship. It’s very, very important that we—I mean this ship—cause some damage, no matter how slight. Understand?”
“Aye, sir.” Levy acknowledged and implemented the order, not understanding at all. A few seconds later, “Missile range.”
“Fire one and two.”
“Firing,” said Levy. “One and two away.”
“Pfelung fighters are clearing the area,” said Bartoli, demonstrating once again the firm grasp of the obvious required by his job description.
But this was mainly Levy’s show, now. “Both missiles hot, straight, and normal. Tracking target. Missiles are in Cooperative Attack Mode and electing to penetrate the Krag point defense systems along separate vectors. Now they’re converging. Point defense penetration. Hit! Direct hit amidships. We got some deflector penetration too—they’ve lost one of their sensor arrays, and…okay.” He was listening to his back room.
“I think we might have gotten a small hull breach. My back room is talking to the Sensors back room, and they’re coming up with a consensus that there is probably a small hull breach—just a couple of millimeters, but we’re getting what looks like some atmosphere leakage.”
“Maneuvering, make for the point where the cruiser is going to engage his compression drive. Bartoli, Kasparov, put your heads and your people together. When we get to that point, I want to know where the cruiser is going.”
“Aye, sir,” they replied in near unison.
“I finally got through to the pennant, sir!” Chin’s voice was pitched a bit high, and his delivery was altogether too urgent. Not surprising. Until now, Cumberland had fought alone. Chin had never managed comms in the middle of a battle. First time for everything. Max was certain it would not be the last.
Accordingly, a little education was in order. “Mr. Chin, we’re getting all the excitement we really need from being in a life-and-death struggle using nuclear weapons.” Max spoke in a calm, level voice. “You don’t need to add to the mix. In CIC, we make all announcements in a calm voice, even the exciting ones, even in the middle of battle. Especially in the middle of battle. Understood?”
“Understood, sir. Communications with the pennant reestablished.” Max did not know that they had been lost, something else on which Chin needed to be schooled, but that could come later. Sensing his error, Chin added, “We lost them for a few minutes. Comms damage to the frigate.” He took
a deep breath, “Decrypt will be on Commandcom.”
Max turned to the display. “PLEASE ACCEPT GRATITUDE FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE AND THAT OF YOUR LITTLE FRIENDS. PLEASE BE MY GUEST FOR DINNER IN A FEW DAYS. I WILL BE DINING ON CROW. I AM AWARE OF YOUR SITUATION. BE ADVISED THAT KRAG CRUISER HAS DAMAGE TO MISSILE TUBES WITH AT LEAST THREE INOPERABLE PERHAPS FOUR AS WELL AS AMIDSHIPS DEFLECTOR DAMAGE AT LEAST 50 PERCENT AND SOME IMPAIRMENT OF SUBLIGHT DRIVE EXTENT UNKNOWN. YOU ARE ORDERED TO PURSUE AND DESTROY CRUISER TO PREVENT COMMUNICATING TO SUPERIORS OUTCOME OF ATTACK ON THIS GROUP. ACTION NECESSARY FOR SAFETY OF ENVOY. GOOD HUNTING, DUFLOT SENDS. END MESSAGE.”
“Safety of the envoy?” The doctor had not spoken a word during the battle for the simple reason that he had nothing useful to say.
“Sure,” Max responded. “If the Krag know that the attack failed and that the envoy was spirited away on a destroyer, they might try again. Their chances of finding the destroyer in interstellar space are vanishingly small, but there are lots of ways to kill a man, and we know that the Krag have spies in lots of places. It would not be unusual for them to go after him using an assassin or a bomb or even to try to hit a whole city with nerve gas. We need to keep them from knowing what happened here.”
Max turned to DeCosta. “XO, tell the Pfelung fighters that I want them flying combat area patrol and escort for the frigate until it gets back to the fleet or until Commander Duflot releases them. Chin, let the pennant know that they are getting Pfelung fighter CAP and escort, and be sure that his comms guy knows the comm protocols. They’ll have a hard time working together if they can’t talk to one another.”
A few seconds later, “Signal from the Pfelung. On Commandcom.” Max read the display: “MESSAGE ACKNOWLEDGED STOP WILL COMPLY STOP QUERY STARFISH ACTUAL DO YOU NOT KNOW THAT FLYING COMBAT AREA PATROL IS BORING REPEAT BORING STOP DESPITE BOREDOM WE WILL KEEP THE WATERS CLEAR OF PREDATORS STOP PERHAPS IF WE ARE LUCKY WE WILL BE ATTACKED AND WE WILL GET TO HAVE MORE NUCLEAR WEAPONS FUN STOP WE LOOK FORWARD TO SWIMMING WITH YOU IN THE FUTURE ROBICHAUX STOP UNTIL WE ARE IN THE SAME WATERS AGAIN WE WISH THAT THE CURRENT ALWAYS BE WITH YOU STOP MESSAGE ENDS.”
For Honor We Stand (Man of War Book 2) Page 35
