If they wanted to be stupid, Avalon’s CAG didn’t mind—but he wondered what he was missing.
04:10 March 24, 2736 ESMDT
BC-129 Camerone, Bridge
Mira watched the ammunition counters for her battlecruiser’s ammunition stocks evaporate like water on a hot summer day. Every twenty-two seconds, Battle Group Seven-One’s ships sent another thirty-four missiles after the carriers.
They had already launched over twenty salvos, and she glanced at her link to Admiral Alstairs.
“Ma’am,” she said quietly over their direct channel. “The Imperials have fired off almost half of their magazines.”
Seventh Fleet could replenish those magazines. Camerone carried the mass manipulators—the only truly difficult-to-manufacture part—for five times the number of missiles her magazines could hold. Her fabricator shops could turn the appropriate raw materials into as many new missile chassis as she needed, and her zero point cells could charge a functionally infinite number of positron warheads.
All of that took time—enough time that the capacity was rarely used to any significant degree. Rebuilding half of their magazines could take a week—a week Operation Rising Star didn’t have built into its timetables.
“Cease fire after twenty-five salvos,” Alstairs ordered on a wider channel after several moments’ thought. “You’re right,” she noted on her private channel with Mira. “I forgot that the Imperial ships had smaller magazines. Thank you.”
“Think the missiles will achieve anything?” Mira asked the Admiral quietly.
“We’ll find out in about thirty minutes,” she replied. “Keep your people on those Q-probes—final telemetry can make all the difference.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Camerone’s Captain replied, without noting that the Admiral was giving ship captain orders, not fleet commander orders. Alstairs knew that already.
Mira was watching the ten salvos that Zheng He’s battle group had launched first. Between those and Seven-One’s missiles, the Volcanos would be under fire for over fifteen minutes—followed up shortly afterwards by their starfighters’ missiles.
The Volcanos were big, modern warships—the best the Commonwealth had. Mira figured they had better than even chances of making it out, but they were going to have to work for it.
“There go Ozolinsh’s fighters,” Keira Rose noted aloud. “Twelve minutes to missile launch range for both fighter groups.”
“What are the orbital platforms doing?” Mira asked. In all of the confusion, she’d almost forgotten about the two hundred platforms—six hundred missile launchers—in orbit.
“Nothing…” Rose said slowly. “They launched fighters and then…nothing.”
“That makes no sense,” Mira replied. “Admiral, are you seeing anything on the orbital platforms?”
“No,” Alstairs replied instantly. “They’re silent. What are the Q-probes showing?”
“Pulling it up now,” Rose told them. “Starless Void.”
“What?” Mira demanded.
“The fighter platforms are venting,” the tactical officer reported. “I’m seeing…I’d say at least ten to twelve different breaches on each Zion—looks like multiple internal explosions.”
“Sabotage,” Camerone’s captain realized. “No wonder those carriers are running. Bombs must have started going off as soon as we showed on the system sensor net. They are having a bad day.”
“My heart bleeds,” Rose told her. “First of Seven-Three’s missiles should be hitting their defenses…now.”
“Show me,” Mira ordered.
There were enough Q-probes scattered around the system now to give them nearly real-time data on their salvos as they charged in. As the missiles closed in on the two carriers, it was quickly apparent why they hadn’t been launching missiles back at the Alliance ships.
A Volcano’s twelve missile launchers wouldn’t do much against the defenses of a four-ship Battle Group.
Twenty-four missiles detonating in the middle of even a fifty-six missile salvo, however, made one hell of a dent. Half of the salvo vanished in those balls of fire—and then a second set of twenty-four missiles slammed into the remainder.
Only two missiles made it through the missile screen the carriers had thrown up, and they didn’t stand a chance against the prepared defenses of two modern carriers.
The second salvo died similarly, none of them making it through the missile screen.
When the third salvo of fifty-six missiles died in its entirety to the same trick, Mira wondered what was going on and checked the telemetry. Force Commander Aleppo was specifically maneuvering her missiles to hit the screen the Terrans had set up. The fourth salvo followed suit, and Mira saw the Trade Factor officer’s plan.
The fifth salvo dove straight into the middle of the massive hole the suicidal sacrifice of their compatriots had opened. Shielded by the radiation of the earlier explosions and their own jammers, they sliced through the missile screen without losing a single weapon.
The Volcanos’ defenses opened fire, sweeping space with lasers and positron beams. They stopped every missile—barely. The closest was less than a kilometer from the nearest carrier before it died, and the Volcano looked the worse for wear after the impact.
Their missiles screen swept back in and wiped the sixth and seventh salvos. The eighth died well clear of the carriers, but the ninth crept a bit closer, creating a radiation wave that covered the arrival of the last salvo from Zheng He’s battle group.
Over five hundred missiles had detonated around the Commonwealth ships now, and the radiation storm filling the space behind them was immense. High-powered radar swept through that storm, picking out missiles and allowing lasers and positron beams to wipe them from space.
For a moment, Mira thought it would be enough for them. Almost six hundred missiles thrown, in exchange for one near miss.
Then four missiles detonated simultaneously—not destroyed by the defenses but self-destructed by Lora Aleppo herself. Eight missiles shot through the new radiation cloud, shielded almost all the way to the enemy.
Five still died too far away to do damage. The defensive systems of a twenty-million-ton carrier were smart, responsive, and powerful. Even almost blinded, they killed five of those last eight missiles.
Two detonated at almost point-blank range, stripping sensors and defensive lasers from the hulls of both carriers.
The last hit the closer carrier a third of the way along its length and detonated, a one-gigaton flash of white light that visibly moved a sixty-million-cubic-meter ship already traveling at two percent of the speed of light.
When the light faded, the Volcano was incredibly still there. A massive gaping wound had opened in the big ship’s side, but she was still accelerating—still running.
“Rose?” Mira said quietly.
“Fifty seconds, ma’am,” her tactical officer replied, her voice equally quiet. “Then it’s my turn.”
“We’ve opened the way for you,” Aleppo told Mira over the channel. “Give ‘em hell.”
“With pleasure, ma’am,” Camerone’s Captain replied, then passed on the sentiment to Rose.
The tactical officer smiled coldly.
“Don’t worry, ma’am—I intend to put Vice Commodore Bachchan out of a target.”
Then both women’s attention was focused on the missiles. While the bandwidth to and from the Q-probes wasn’t sufficient for Rose to send the missiles fully updated telemetry, it was enough for her to feed them new orders—orders the Jackhammers’ AIs tried doggedly to carry out.
Rose expended Battle Group Camerone’s first three salvos exactly the same way Aleppo had, intentionally blasting the missile screen out of the way. Her fourth salvo charged into the teeth of the Volcanos’ defenses, spread wide, then detonated on their own as the carriers’ defenses lashed out.
The fifth dove through that cloud, crossing almost a third of the Volcanos’ defensive range in the cover of their sisters’ deaths, and charged s
traight at the carriers. Once again, the empty space around the two Commonwealth heavy carriers lit up with fire.
The one hit Zheng He had landed had clearly hurt its victim. The defensive fire was far weaker and sparser than it had been—but Rose had only thirty-four missiles a salvo, not fifty-six.
Her fifth salvo died far closer to the carriers than the Terrans could have liked. Blast waves and radiation swept over the carriers, more defenses and targeting scanners failing—and Battle Group Seven-One’s sixth salvo was right on its heels.
Three missiles made it through everything the Commonwealth ships threw at them, and the damaged carrier vanished in a tripled ball of flame. Cheers echoed around Camerone’s bridge and Mira bared her teeth in excitement, watching as Rose neatly guided their seventh salvo in.
The excitement faded into an awed respect as the big Volcano pirouetted, dodged, drew their missiles in, and lashed out with every weapon at their disposal—and stopped thirty-four missiles. And then, to Mira’s shock, did it again.
“Clever boy,” she heard Rose murmur. “But you’re not clever enough.”
Missiles came apart in balls of fire as Fleet Commander Keira Rose fed new orders to the nanocircuitry brains of her tenth missile salvo. Some were killed by the enemy; some were self-destructed, slamming hammers of fire tracing a swirling path through space all the way to the Terran carrier.
Captain Mira Solace had access to Rose’s consoles, the reporting communications from the missiles, and the Q-probes Rose was transmitting her orders through—and Mira had no idea how many missiles the tactical officer delivered to the target at last.
It was enough. The swirling path of fire intersected the big carrier—and the Volcano came apart in shocking white fire.
“Target destroyed,” Rose announced.
04:25 March 24, 2736 ESMDT
SFG-001 Actual—Falcon-C type command starfighter
The destruction of the two Terran carriers barely registered on Michael’s mental radar. He was focused on the fighter formation his two-pronged strike was converging on. Range counters were dropping fast, and a second number representing the range of his formation’s Starfires, given the current relative velocity, was rising.
Those two numbers were about a minute from intersecting. He had the same pair of numbers for Ozolinsh’s starfighters as well—Polar Bear’s CAG had nailed her acceleration window perfectly. All five hundred plus fighters in the two formations would reach missile range effectively simultaneously.
The Terrans had continued on their pursuit course of Battle Group Seven-Three, straight into the teeth of Ozolinsh’s Falcons and without even trying to evade Michael’s Falcons and Templars. Their commander had to have something in mind, but Avalon’s CAG wasn’t seeing it—there was no way the Scimitars would win against almost-even numbers of seventh-generation fighters.
The greater acceleration of the Alliance fighters gave the Terrans the edge in range by a few seconds—and in the moment that they fired, Michael finally saw what the battle-hardened Terran commander had seen from the beginning.
Six hundred Scimitars put twenty-four hundred Javelin fighter missiles into space—and every single one of them was targeted on Ozolinsh’s formation. The hundred and seventy-six starfighters from Polar Bear and Culloden couldn’t survive a salvo of that magnitude.
They could have survived the half-salvo or the proportionate-to-their-numbers salvo that Michael had been expecting. But he barely had time to register his mistake before his own ships had to launch.
Over twelve hundred missiles launched from his own formation and seven hundred from Ozolinsh’s, a total over nineteen hundred weapons targeted on six hundred targets. He wasn’t going to get a clean sweep with that number, but he was going to gut their formation, leave them vulnerable for the follow-up salvos.
“Stanford,” Ozolinsh cut into his channel, her voice harsh. “I’m launching my follow-up salvos, then I am ordering my people to ditch their ships. Sixty seconds should get us clear of the blast zone, but we cannot stop that salvo—maybe if your missiles could intercept, but they can’t.
“We’re handing off telemetry control to your gunners,” she continued. “Get me a list of people. I’m sorry, sir.”
“It’s the right call, Gabrielle. Do it,” Michael ordered.
As they were speaking, the Terrans launched a second salvo—still at Ozolinsh’s people. They weren’t leaving any chance of those starfighters surviving. Her plan should save most of her people, but Michael still felt his guts twist as he looked at the tsunami that was going to wipe a fifth of Seventh Fleet’s starfighter strength from the universe.
It took him fractions of a second to pull a list of the three hundred plus gunners in Seven-Two’s fighters, sort it by their official skill ratings in their last formal test, and then send Ozolinsh the top hundred and seventy-six names.
In the same instant, his starfighters fired again, another nineteen hundred missiles blasting into space, heading for the Scimitars.
Forty-five seconds after that, the third Terran salvo launched into space—and this time, the Terrans were targeting Michael’s people. He had almost twice as many starfighters as Ozolinsh—what was a smart action on her part could easily be called cowardice on his.
“All squadrons,” he said aloud, his voice surprisingly calm. “Use your final missile salvo for missile defense. We’re going to make it through this.”
Even as he spoke, he watched the telemetry from Battle Group Seven-Three’s fighters—as the emergency pods blasted free of their spacecraft, engines blasting them away from their motherships at four hundred gravities. They’d be clear of the blast zones, barely.
The first salvos arrived before a fourth salvo could be launched. Michael’s gaze was fixed on Ozolinsh’s starfighters. Without a human aboard, the computers could only do so much—Federation AI was smart, but it wasn’t intuitive. It couldn’t be random.
It couldn’t make guesses. That was why there were humans aboard a starfighter.
And why without humans aboard, Polar Bear and Culloden’s fighters were doomed.
They did better than he expected. Eighty to ninety percent of missile defense was effectively done by the computers regardless. The networked AIs coolly assessed the incoming salvo, allocated lasers and positron lances, and maneuvered the fighters with mechanical precision for the shots they needed to take.
The computers took out over a thousand missiles—and almost fourteen hundred made it through. Some starfighters were hit by single missiles, others by as many as fifteen. It didn’t matter—in one Void-cursed sequence of explosions, all one hundred and seventy-six starfighters ceased to exist.
The Scimitars had more fighters, with gunners backing the computers and engineers running the ECM. They also, however, had over three hundred modern fighters slamming their ECM into the teeth of their scanners and defenses, the Falcons’ and Templars’ mind-bogglingly powerful transmitters making hash of scanners now less than a hundred thousand kilometers distant.
Michael’s starfighters followed their missiles in, the time lapse between salvo launches eaten by the rapidly shrinking distance. Lances targeted Terran missiles and Terran starfighters indiscriminately in a point-blank cataclysm of fire the Templars’ and Falcons’ heavier lances ripped open from twice the Scimitars’ range.
The Vice Commodore’s focus was on—could only be on, at this point—his own starfighter’s maneuvers as he danced the Falcon through the deadly maelstrom he and his enemies had conjured.
Three seconds after the first salvos struck home, Michael’s starfighters interpenetrated with the handful of surviving Terran ships, both sides slicing beams of positrons through space with wild abandon.
Nine seconds after that, the Alliance fighters were out of range of the expanding debris cloud that had been six hundred Scimitar-class fighters.
Forty-three Falcons and twenty-four Templars didn’t make it that far.
Michael swallowed, trying to process t
he sheer chaos of the last minute, then swallowed again as he swept the tactical plot for emergency beacons.
“Everyone slow to zero velocity,” he ordered slowly. “SFG Zero Zero One Actual to Avalon—we need search-and-rescue out here now. For ours and theirs,” he noted finally.
There weren’t many of the latter. Automatic safeties kicked in where they could, but the power of spaceborne weaponry meant there was very little time to do so unless, like Ozolinsh’s people, the crews bailed early.
Say what you like about the Commonwealth—and Michael often did—their soldiers had courage.
Chapter 21
Frihet System
05:10 March 24, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
AT-032 Chimera Landing Group, Assault Shuttle Four
The approach from Chimera to the Zion platforms was nerve-wracking. Intimidating, massive, and tough as modern personal battle armor was, it would do nothing for the Marines if the assault shuttle took a positron-lance hit from the fighter launch bases.
But those bases, damaged as they were, absolutely had to be secured before the starships could enter orbit. If someone was alive and sitting on the control systems for even a handful of the missile satellites, firing them off at point-blank range would be a quick way to destroy a couple hundred trillion stellars of starships.
“We’re heading in for a nice, gentle contact,” Edvard’s pilot informed him. “ETA sixty seconds. Be aware, we have no atmosphere at the contact point, so keep your suits sealed.”
Edvard passed that on to his people with a quick text update. The armor should take care of that on its own—the AIs in the armor suits weren’t geniuses, but they were effective in their limited areas—but it was better to be safe.
“Do we have any update from Seventh Fleet on what they’re seeing in the station, sir?” he asked Major Brahm. Last he’d heard, the Navy had been maneuvering Q-probes in to close range to give them live data on what, if anything, had survived the apparent sabotage.
Battle Group Avalon (Castle Federation Book 3) Page 16
