Claws That Catch votsb-4

by John Ringo

  She could also see the enemy headed towards their ride at a very fast clip.

  “Follow them!” she shouted. “Section leaders, report casualties.”

  “Permission to reengage Dreen fighters,” Defensive Control asked.

  “As long as you don’t hit the dragonflies,” Korcan replied. “Fighter Control?”

  “I would not use the term ‘control,’ sir,” the lieutenant commander, a former FA-18 pilot who was itching to get these medieval idiots to learn real air-to-air tactics. “Dragonflies appear to have taken out eighteen Dreen fighters for a loss of seven. One of those may have been a mid-space; the encounter was too confusing for our computers to really keep track of. Definitely don’t know who got what. Some of the Dreen losses may have been blue-on-blue and ditto for the dragonflies.”

  “Clearly we must get this simulator Che-chee has developed,” Korcan said. “Order the dragonflies to decelerate and pursue.”

  “Colonel She-kah’s on it.”

  “Why are we still not catching up?” She-kah snarled, then waited impatiently for the response. This thing about “light-speed lag” was still confusing. It seemed to her as if the controller on the other end was dawdling.

  “Colonel, you had a high relative vector to the Dreen formation,” the combat controller said, trying not to sigh. “They’re decelerating to engage us but you’re still not even headed back to us, yet. Your velocity was too high for your accel to get you going in the right direction, yet. You have to keep decelerating for a while. I’d recommend random maneuvering as well. You’re well into the engagement basket of the brain-ship.”

  “I noticed,” She-kah snapped.

  “Maneuver, you young idiot,” She-kah said as a plasma bolt from the brain-ship passed by.

  “I’m trying, Colonel,” Re-ka replied. “But I’m getting very confused.”

  Everyone in the formation was. The best they could do was try to figure out which way the various icons were pointed and try to follow them, not an inherent Cheerick skill. The only thing in view from their perspective was the brain-ship and the torrent of fire pouring out from its midsection. The dragonflies had gotten so scattered on the pass through the Dreen fighter group many of them were out of sight of each other.

  “Fighter control, can you turn off all the icons but one?” She-kah asked.

  “Aye, aye,” the controller replied a few seconds later. Damn this lag thing! “Which one, Colonel?”

  “Mine. I need to rally my force. Wave the banner high, Fighter Control.”

  As the Dreen fighters approached the Thermopylae its fire became more accurate, taking out more and more of the fighters.

  However, the Dreen fighters had a functional engagement range of nearly two light-seconds, nearly twice the distance from Earth to the moon, and they were highly maneuverable. It was impossible for the guns to track on them and ensure a hit at that range.

  But the Thermopylae had a lot of anti-fighter guns. The belching battlewagon simply filled the space the fighters were passing through with lasers, plasma and chunks of iron.

  It didn’t mean the ship wasn’t taking damage of her own, though.

  “Gunnery Control, Plasma Nineteen,” Petty Officer First Class Malcolm Charles shouted over the internal communications circuit. “Nineteen is toast. Compartment is evacuated. Gun’s total slag. Dockyard job.”

  “Roger, Nineteen,” Gunnery Control replied. “Initiate Damage Control shut-down procedures and evacuate the compartment. Casualties?”

  “Negative,” Charles replied. “Blow-out panel initiated and shielded us. If I ever meet a Karchava I’m gonna kiss him right on his bulgey forehead. Initiate shut-down procedures, aye.”

  “Roger, Nineteen. Gunnery Control, out.”

  “Okay, Colonel, you’re headed back for us,” the combat controller said patiently. “Looks like your formation is getting in good tune, too.”

  “Where are the Dreen?” She-kah asked. “Give me icons back.”

  “Single icon for the near center of the formation, Colonel,” the controller said. The lag was much less this time for some reason. “You got it?”

  “Up and to my left,” She-kah said. “When we have to… slow down, whatever the word you use is, give me the order. Keep only my icon on my other fighters. Let them follow me this time.”

  “Roger, Colonel, will do.”

  However, while the Dreen fighters had good “space legs,” a range of over seven hundred million kilometers or nearly five times the distance from Earth to the sun, the initial battle had taken place deep within the system. They had been dispatched, initially, to try to screen the ground combat assault force and got to within an AU of the local star.

  Now, with their carriers dust, they had to push their way back out to cover the brain-ship. And while they had high accelerations, they had to decelerate to slow to the velocity of the human flagship. All of that took fuel.

  By the time the majority of the fighters approached the Thermopylae they were, in human terms, “bingo.”

  That didn’t mean they were useless. The power system for the plasma guns was independent of the drive. It did mean they were relegated to either keeping up with the still accelerating battlewagon or maneuvering.

  Being Dreen, they chose following the battlewagon, eventually most of them settling into a nice predictable straight line.

  “Majority of the Dreen fighters have stopped maneuvering,” Defensive Control said. “They’re just following like they’re on a string.”

  “I take it you’ve used that to our benefit?” Korcan asked, looking at the damage report. “If you can.”

  Spectre sighed, winced and leaned sideways.

  “Rotate the ship,” he whispered.

  Korcan let loose a stream of quiet clicks, the first sign of emotion he had given in the entire battle and far too quiet to be noticed in the CIC.

  “Conn, CIC.”

  “Go CIC.”

  “Rotate the ship to engage fighters with upper and port batteries.”

  “Rotate ship, aye.”

  “Should have done that earlier,” Korcan said.

  “We’re all learning,” Spectre said.

  “I have been a ship commander before,” Korcan said. “Not one as large as this, but a commander nonetheless. You should not have to tell me.”

  “You were in stasis for a long time,” Spectre replied. “It’s not quite like riding a bicycle.”

  The Dreen fighters dispatched from the brain-ship still had fuel and were maneuvering wildly through the incoming fire from the Karchava battlewagon. With most of their brethren toast, they were the only remaining attackers pounding fire into the now rotating Thermopylae. But they, too, were following the dreadnought like beads, jinking around, yes, but nonetheless following a mostly predictable path.

  A path that lead directly to the dragonflies, which were now closing at their maximum of one thousand gravities of acceleration.

  “Colonel, begin deceleration,” the combat controller said. “They’re headed for you, now, and you’re going really fast at them again.”

  “Roger,” She-kah said, thinking “slow down” at the dragonfly. She could see the Thermopylae now and by looking where the fire was headed and the icon she could figure out more or less where the enemy was. But she still couldn’t judge distance. “All dragonflies slow. Form box formation around my position. We will charge them as cavalry should.”

  The last fighter battle was, in direct contrast to the first, the slowest space battle in the history of the galaxy. And extremely one sided.

  The Dreen continued to pour fire into the Thermopylae even as the decelerating dragonflies closed. The dragonflies began firing as soon as they came in view of the Dreen, continuing to slow until their relative speed was barely faster than humanity’s Space Shuttle, in astronomical terms the walking speed of a very old and decrepit man. The dragonfly lasers were strong enough to penetrate and destroy a Dreen fighter with one blast and, inaccurate as they wer
e, they had time to fire multiple blasts into the fighter formation before they passed.

  One by one, in pairs and in groups, the Dreen fighters came apart under the hammer of the dragonflies. There were thirteen left, though, as the dragonfly formation passed. This time, Colonel She-kah didn’t even need control to handle the reassembly. She reformed her fighters, accelerated back to the Dreen formation and closed on them at what was, even at normal air-breathing fighter speeds, dead-slow.

  Closing at the speed of a World War One biplane, at ranges that were not much more than those paper-airplanes fought from, the Cheerick fighters simply could not miss.

  As nine dragonflies concentrated their fire on the last remaining Dreen, Colonel She-kah let out a yell of triumph.

  “Fighter Control, Dragonflight. All fighters terminated as far as I can tell.”

  “Roger, Dragonflight. You should be good on fuel for a bit. Stay out there. Conditions are going to get a bit frosty around here.”

  “Okay, I thought the Thermo was tough,” Spectre said, shaking his head.

  The Dreen brain-ship had taken four solid hits from the mass driver and still it headed for the unreality node. It wasn’t going to make it, unless Spectre was much mistaken, and even if it could it was unlikely to be able to go into unreal space. But it was still plowing along. It had started to decelerate but apparently there had been some damage to engines because at its current rate it was going to overshoot the node.

  But it was still coming.

  “If we continue on our current course and speed we’re going to practically ram it,” Korcan said. “Conn, prepare to yaw the ship to maintain fire by main gun on the target. Yaw will be to port to engage their port side.”

  “Prepare to yaw port, aye.”

  Yaw the ship to engage with starboard batteries. Fire all guns as they bear.

  The two battlewagons, one massive and one monstrous, began to twist in space, slowly, oh so slowly. Like the Karchava dreadnought, the brain-ship’s main guns were forward, four massive meson cannons each with more power than the Thermopylae’s single mass driver. Those, however, had been taken out early by the space spider infestation. While they had been mostly crisped by the mass driver impacts, the damage was done. The main arsenal of the brain-ship had not been a factor in the battle at all.

  But arrayed along her sides were weapons nearly as powerful. Multiple hundreds of terawatts class directed weapons, plasma cannons to dwarf anything made by humans or Hexosehr, mass drivers nearly as large as the Thermopylae’s.

  Crippled as she was, the brain-ship was still Goliath to the Thermopylae’s David. But as with Goliath and David, the Thermopylae had one thing going for her; she was more maneuverable.

  “Main gun charged.”

  “Wait to fire until we bear,” Korcan said. “The brain-ship is maneuvering. We do not want to take too much fire from her secondaries. But I want a shot right… here…” he said, marking a spot two thirds of the way back on the massive dreadnought and centerline. “This is the best guess we have for the location of the sentient. It is the location of the controller on other Dreen ships. If we can fire a round that penetrates to the controller…”

  “Worth the shot,” Spectre said. “But for what we are about to receive…”

  “Target maneuvering counter to our maneuver,” Combat Control reported. “They’re trying to get their starboard side to bear. We’re trying to fire into their port.”

  “We’re slightly out of plane from them,” Korcan said. “Conn, maneuver downwards as we skew. Continue rotation.”

  “Dreen secondaries firing,” Defensive Control reported, just as there was a shudder through the ship.

  “Damage control’s going to be busy.”

  The two ships continued to close, the Thermopylae circling the bull like a matador. But bulls don’t have plasma cannons.

  “Can the mass driver take this?” Spectre asked as the ship rang like a tocsin to a Dreen mass driver strike.

  “That is why there are mostly acceleration rings forward,” Korcan said placidly. “And most of the fire is hitting our flanks. Serious damage, but the mass driver still has over ninety percent operability. Good design.”

  “Hope there are some Karchava left somewhere,” Spectre said. “I want to shake their hands. Or claws or tentacles or whatever.”

  “I think I have a firing solution,” Main Gun Control reported. “Should hit the location you designated.”

  “Fire.”

  It was like pithing a frog. The enormous mass of the projectile hit the armor of the brain-ship low on its port side, penetrating upwards through the refractory material to blow all the way through the massive battlewagon.

  And it missed the brain.

  However, there are three necessities to any ship. A brain, the control section of a human, Hexosehr or Adar vessel, or the sentient controller of a Dreen battlewagon, which always has a redundant backup; the lungs, the environmental section that all spaceships need, and the heart, the engine room that all ships, space or otherwise, require.

  It missed the brain. But it hit the heart. Most hearts don’t explode. Unless they happen to be already overloaded fusion cooling systems.

  “Whoa,” Spectre said as fire began to gush out of the ship from every hatch along its entire length. “Nice secondar — ” He closed his eyes at the flash on his monitor and blinked. “What did you hit?”

  “I think we just found out where the engine room is on a brain-ship, Admiral,” Korcan said. “Ops. Discontinue combat action. Divert all personnel to damage control. Recall the dragonflies. Our work is done.”

  EPILOGUE

  “As soon as gates are installed we’re going to be heading home,” Captain Zanella said. “The Blade will be heading back as soon as she’s repaired. There are plenty of Marines on the Thermopylae to ensure station security.”

  “And then there’s the spiders,” Berg said, nodding. “Orders?”

  “Get some rest,” the CO said. “We’ll be here a couple more days, max.”

  “I’ve got some stuff I still need to do, sir,” Berg replied.

  “Up to you,” the CO said. “If part of it’s catching up on mail, your evaluation’s in your inbox.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Berg said.

  “In case I have to tell you, you did a damned fine job. Get some rest. You’ve earned it.”

  Berg nodded to the CO as he left, then brought up his eval. He looked at it carefully but really couldn’t find anywhere that the CO could have written it more glowingly. It was said that any evaluation that didn’t make an officer sound like the next Napoleon was a guaranteed career killer. Berg’s first evaluation as an officer made Napoleon sound like a piker.

  The lieutenant nodded again and closed the file. That was one of hundreds if he stayed in. Each of which would be just as important to his career.

  That was the past. In the meantime, he had work to do.

  “Dear Mrs. Kaijahano, It was my honor to be your son’s platoon leader during the mission where he lost his life. In all my time as a Marine, I have never known a finer…”

  “That was why the Hexosehr told us to wait,” Prael said, shaking his head. “That’s a damned nice ship you’ve got there, Admiral. Even as beat up as it is at the moment. What I don’t get is how you got out here so fast.”

  “The Hexosehr completed the conversion while in orbit around one of the gate stars,” the admiral said. “I’d known it was going to come on-line soon, but not exactly when. I’d just come out with the advance party when we got the news about the Tree. So I jumped out immediately with the tech reps still aboard. Bit of a surprise for them, but waste not a minute, as Nelson would say.”

  “Did you have the same TACO I had, sir?” Prael said. “The real question is: Don’t admirals usually command fleets?”

  “I’ll have one soon enough,” Blankemeier said, grinning. “Especially with you holding onto this facility. Right now I’ve got a temporary Hexosehr commander, Ship Master
Korcan, good guy. He’s got his ship under construction, now, though, a Chaos destroyer. The Thermopylae is, according to agreement, an American flagged Alliance spaceship, just like the Vorpal Blade. Which means she needs an American CO.”

  “Frankly, sir,” Prael said, looking around at the assembled officers. “If you want a suggestion, Captain Wea — ”

  “I was told that if everything looked right, the commanding officer had already been decided, Captain,” Spectre said, cutting him off. “Given the actions in this system, the Thermopylae is yours. She’ll remain in this system to help the Hexosehr convert the Tree to an advanced base for the Alliance and as local defense. The Karchava did a fine job, but the Hexosehr had a few fillips on fusion and drive tech they didn’t, so she’s about ten percent faster and twenty percent more powerful than original. She also has new hull plating, so she’ll take a pounding and keep coming. I think she just proved that last one.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Prael said. “But I really think…”

  “Decision’s final,” Blankemeier said. “Besides, Weaver’s going to be busy fixing the Blade and training a new captain.”

  “It’s my lot in life,” Weaver said, sighing.

  “Once the Hexosehr are up and running, we’ll seed the whole system, and especially the jump points, with spider mines,” Spectre said, rubbing his hands together. “Between that and the Tree, this solar system is going to be well nigh impregnable. And with the space dock already constructed, the Hexosehr can get to work on ships right away. Then there are the captured converts, three more dreadnoughts. As I said, I’ll have a fleet soon enough. Just one thing. Miss Moon?”

  “I do not want to be stuck on a space station for the rest of my life,” Miriam said.