Hawk Seven (Flight of the Hawk)

by Little, Robert

  Once the excitement died down and the fighters had berthed back on the monster, chief asked, “Sir, do you have any thoughts on what we’re going to do once we get to the other side and finish getting reads?”

  Instead of directly answering him, I asked, “What can you tell me about Mr. Mark 65’s capabilities? I don’t mean specs and the manufacturer’s bull, but your own experience with it.”

  Chief Kana said, “Well, we don’t go shooting those things off every day, so I can’t say I’ve got all that much practical experience with it, but I can say that it is pretty smart and can be programmed with some general instructions as apart from specific ones. For example, you could program it to maneuver to stand off from enemy ships, run slow and almost invisible until it was ordered to get close enough to its target, then go to max accel, which is about thirty G’s worth. Are you thinking of sending them over yonder?”

  I smiled in appreciation at how well the chief had not only answered my question but also given me a suggestion as to how to use it. He’d obviously been around officers before.

  I nodded and said, “We’re here, we haven’t been spotted and I’d love to see how these guys respond to a big hole in the side of that ship. Could we program it to fly away from our position before heading in, so that even if they did spot it, they wouldn’t find it easy to backtrack it?” Chief Kana nodded his head and said, “Piece of cake. I like the way your evil little mind works, Mr. Lieutenant Junior Grade sir. We could have it head up and over, say, ninety degrees, then head in. Those destroyer-sized craft puzzle me, and it would be interesting to see what they do. We’ve got two 65’s, what about the other one?”

  I said, “If we shoot off one, we had better shoot the other one too. I want to be able to maneuver when they spot one or the other. Let’s talk about how we would send them in, then let’s set it up and send our bugs a little greeting card from earth fleet. I think it’s about time we ruined their sleep.”

  Over the next ten minutes we discussed how best we could use the Mark 65’s. Carolyn wondered, “What’s going to happen if we do manage to get those things in close enough to go ‘boom’ as you so expertly put it? I mean, that ship is enormous! What damage would they do?” Elian shrugged his shoulders and grinned, “Let’s find out.” Elian possessed the somewhat rare ability to quickly get to the bottom line: we wouldn’t know until we knew.

  We put together a course that would send the two missiles skulking in opposite directions before heading in at roughly one hundred eighty degrees separation from each other. We wanted both of them to get into range at the same time, and that took but a moment to plot once we had developed the tactic.

  The chief was correct, these missiles were pretty smart. As planned, the birds would eventually try to penetrate from different points of the compass, and also at different angles to the target. Best of all, they would be nowhere near us.

  Finally, we were ready and my tiny crew tensed as I looked around for any final doubts or questions. Everyone nodded and I punched the final orders into the system. We felt a shudder as the missiles released and drifted slowly away. We changed course and gradually angled up and away from the two birds, which began to move under their own power. We planned to be far away when they made their final approach.

  We hoped to learn many things from this attack. For example, what would they do if they spotted the missiles before they went to sprint mode. What did they know about missile technology, if anything? What type and quality of defenses did they have?

  We continued heading around the mother ship at a safe distance between the inner core of destroyers and the outer shell of fighters, recording everything we could. We estimated that we would have moved approximately two hundred and seventy degrees around the carrier by the time the missiles headed in.

  Over the next three hours we had to adjust our course twice to avoid ships that headed out or came in, as well as what appeared to be a returning flight of fighters, heading back from a presumed attack against our force.

  We made a study of the destroyer’s headings, as they might lead us to another, or other, huge ship or ships that we hadn’t seen. Finally, we brought up all our systems to readiness. Our two lasers unlocked and trained out, ready to put a little ray of sunshine into someone’s day.

  We’d seen no sign of increased alertness, no evidence that our two inbound missiles had been seen, and at the appointed time, we watched tensely for them to turn in towards the target. The next hour would be critical. Every minute without being spotted meant that the odds of their being able to reach their target went up. We had tasked the missiles with attempting to hit an open flight deck, if at all possible. That particular instruction wasn’t included in the missile’s standard instructions, but a little creative programming told it to look for a large open hold. Our Etech managed that in just a few moments of thought, and even less time on the programming. She seemed to be capable.

  Carolyn received periodic data updates from the two missiles. They sent burst transmissions at irregular intervals and on different frequencies, and that was what worried me the most. We were not sending any data back as the missiles were smart enough to do their job without anyone looking over their little electronic shoulders. But, it was possible that these unknown beings might just be able to spot those transmissions. There was only the one way to find out, the one we were presently using.

  Suddenly, we spotted increased activity all around the inner shell of destroyer-sized ships. We’d been inside the outer shell now for nearly twenty hours, and this was the first time we’d seen any sign of activity, other than merely holding station on the mother ship. They all went to high levels of acceleration, heading out from the monster ship.

  Elian said, “One of those destroyers is heading approximately at the projected course of missile two. The other one seems to be clear for the moment. At max accel it would take over three minutes to reach the ship.”

  I asked chief Kana, “How will the 65 handle that destroyer?” He said, “Well, it should angle away from it. If the 65 spots a big increase in acceleration, or if it gets hit with enough radar energy to indicate it’s been spotted, it will go to sprint mode. It has some very good anti-radar features, but we know diddly about these guys, so I can’t even guess how they’re going to respond, or how effective their response might be. Hell, we don’t even know what sensor technologies they have.”

  We waited and watched. That one destroyer continued heading outward at nearly ten gravities and would pass within twenty five thousand kilometers of the near inbound bird at its closest approach. The missile was pretty stealthy, but it was still a very big needle that at the moment was probably angling away from the destroyer, giving that ship a slightly better opportunity to paint it with its sensors.

  It looked like the missile was going to be able to slide safely past, but the destroyer suddenly altered course, and fired a laser back at the approximate location where we thought the missile would be. The laser missed, because we suddenly had a new gravity bulge as the missile went to max accel. It could easily outrun any manned vessel, but outrunning energy weapons was another matter.

  The screen suddenly went fuzzy momentarily as the missile brought up its defensive systems. Fighters began erupting from the ship as the missile bored in. There was no sign that the other missile had been spotted, which was good news. Elian said quietly, “Those fighters ejected from the mother ship in less than one minute. That indicates they were manned with their systems all up.”

  Carolyn said, “Their attention seems to be focused on the one missile they know about. We’ve got about thirty seconds to impact.” She was silent for a moment then said, “I’ve got a new trace, right about where the second missile should be. It’s missile one. It’s gone to sprint mode as well, probably because they lit up their radars.”

  For Elian and I, launching capital missiles was brand new territory, and we observed everything with an understandably high level of interest.

  The area near t
he first missile was speckled with lasers as the first ship continued to fire back in the general area, and two other ships joined in. Their fire seemed to be wild and unaimed, as if they knew approximately where the missile was located, but not exactly. We hadn’t used anything like this anti radar defense on the bugs before, and it seemed to be working.

  There were now at least five fighters between the ship and the missile. They must have been sitting in voided flight bays, ready for immediate launch. That piece of data might be important when we came back for a return visit.

  The missiles’ acceleration built rapidly, but it was still vulnerable. It seemed to be jinking away from the destroyers but two of the fighters were directly in its path. Both were now firing their lasers and we recorded the spectacle of over forty laser weapons firing at one incoming missile. This was a situation made for the term ‘friendly fire’.

  There was an immense flash, signaling the demise of the first missile, just seconds before it would have reached the ship. It carried an enormous payload, and it took two fighters with it, but we didn’t want to kill fighters, we wanted Mother. The chief said, “Well, you two are now aces. Too bad, I’d have preferred the one mother ship to just two fighters.”

  Seconds later the second missile detonated, causing an enormous explosion on the side away from us. We watched tensely and saw glowing chunks of ship blow outward, along with atmosphere. There were no additional explosions, and the ship’s drive continued with no change, indicating that we hadn’t hit anything important.

  In fact, as we watched, the ship began to ponderously accelerate and change course. We continued to see new gravity drives pop into existence as fighters erupted from the huge ship.

  Elian said, “Well, boys and girls, this has been fun, but can we go home now?” I grinned and asked, “Have you got a course plotted for us?” He passed a suggested course over to my screen, as well as to Carolyn’s. I looked at it and said, “OK, it looks about as good as we’re going to get.”

  We changed course and began angling back out and away from the huge ship, which continued to accelerate and change course. Fortunately, it was heading away from us, but there were now over forty fighters within five million kilometers of us, and two were heading more or less directly at us.

  Every single one of their craft was blasting space with radar. I didn’t see the logic of that, but they were sure beating the bushes. They seemed to have come to the conclusion that there were at least two enemy ships, for some of the fighters were concentrating in a cone-shaped area whose center was the point of impact of the successful missile strike. There was another group of fighters doing the same thing in the area where they had spotted and killed the first missile.

  I said to nobody in particular, “They seem to be fighting dumb, possibly indicating they’ve either never encountered missiles, or, well, maybe they’re just dumb? Certainly, they are less familiar with missiles than with lasers.”

  We were a long way from those two groups, but we still had at least five fighters that could possibly catch a sniff of us. I eased off the acceleration to four G’s and asked Elian, “How far from those fighters do you think we can be and still kill them?”

  He grinned and asked, “Are we having fun yet? I’d guess, based on our own, terrifyingly recent experience, about forty to fifty thousand K’s for a sure kill, perhaps seventy K’s to cause significant damage.” Carolyn said, “If nobody changes course or accel, we’re going to find out in about ten minutes. I’m painting on your screens the two fighters that we’re going to have problems with unless they change course or we increase our accel. I’d say we’d have to go to six or seven G’s to avoid them.”

  I nodded my head and looked quickly at the outer shell of fighters, who were holding position and blasting the space all around them with their radar. From my point of view, they were simply making it easy for us to see them.

  As the fighters and destroyer-sized ships continued to spread out, we began running out of options. I upped our acceleration to six G’s and angled our course more directly away from the mother ship. We needed to stay invisible because even though we had a higher acceleration potential, the several fighters heading toward us had already built up a lot of acceleration, relative to us.

  I told Elian, “OK, warm up your targeting systems, but don’t bring them on-line yet, not until we know we’ve been spotted. If you see them change course toward us, don’t wait for my order, shoot.” Elian looked over at me and grinned, “Yes boss man. I’s ready.” Carolyn looked sharply at him and then grinned. Elian knew how to handle pressure, and his goofy answer seemed to help Carolyn. Chief Kana was quiet, but calm. He was monitoring our systems performance. The odds of our learning exactly how well our offensive systems worked were going up.

  Elian said, “Rob, I’d guess that in about fifteen seconds, we’re going to get painted with enough reflected energy by that first fighter for him to see us. He changed course a minute ago and it’s taking him just too close to us for comfort. I suggest that we send him greetings from earth and then scoot.”

  I told him, “Don’t fire yet, let’s see how close he gets to us first.” I dropped my acceleration back down to three G’s, figuring that either way we were going to get spotted, so we may as well get some information out of our fix.

  Finally, at thirty thousand kilometers, the nearest fighter changed course directly for us. Less than a second later, Elian fired one laser, hitting him and causing an immediate explosion. He fired the other laser two seconds later and hit the other fighter at a distance of sixty thousand kilometers, blowing him up nicely. Elian said, “This Hawk is a lot more fun than our old Dash 6.” I smiled, knowing what he meant: we had achieved three kills in our fighter, but they took an incredible amount of work, not counting the time spent drifting in the remains of that same craft.

  Two shots, two kills and seven confirmed kills. Hoping to avoid being located again I changed course ninety degrees in two planes and kept my accel down, while remaining on a heading taking us away from the mother ship. The enemy would now know that it had at least one bogey, as well as its general vicinity.

  We still had two fighters outside of us who now knew our approximate location. I wanted to get close enough to kill them before giving away our exact location to our enemy, who was now pretty upset, judging by the amount of activity going on.

  They had finally stopped launching fighters, but this one ship had launched over sixty fighters, not counting all the fighters already on station, all of who were now looking in my direction. The two fighters outside of us changed course towards our previous location and I angled slightly to go between them. We now had a good idea of how close they had to come to see us and I said, “We’re going to pass between these two guys at a minimum distance of about forty thousand kilometers. Fire them up at fifty.”

  Chief Kana said, “I’ve got a red light on one of the fusion bottles. It’s fluctuating a little, but no worry yet.” I acknowledged his report and looked for any other fighters that could possibly have a shot at us. The moment we fired at these two, they were going to know exactly where we were, despite our course change after the first two shots.

  Elian said, “We’re coming down to sixty thousand, about ten seconds ‘til we shoot.” I badly wanted to try slipping between them but I didn’t want to take the chance of giving them a shot at us first. I liked having all that armor around us, but I didn’t want to test it.

  Finally, Elian said, “Ok, here we go.” A second later, both lasers fired. One fighter exploded instantly, but the other didn’t, although it began spinning as if it were out of control. Elian simply waited five seconds for the system to charge back up and then discharged both lasers into it, exploding the fighter nicely. A Big Hammer indeed. We now had nine, but who was counting?

  I jammed the throttle to the pegs and our acceleration began rising up quickly and flattened out at sixteen and change. We were starting out from a relatively low accel compared to their fighters, who had
been accelerating for several minutes. However, they were not heading in our direction and would have to change course. Said course changes took place almost immediately. Well, so they had good reactions.

  We might be able to get away without any more shooting on our part. However, even from four hundred thousand kilometers our new friends were wasting no time in shooting off their lasers, for all the good it would do them. They now knew our location, due to our gravity signature, but that was not the same thing as being able to do anything about it.

  Chief Kana said, “If I’m correct, they’re lasing us, not in the hope of getting a kill, but to raise our skin temperature so they can better see us.” Chief Kana was smart – I hadn’t thought of that, just figured they were inexperienced.

  I asked chief Kana, “How are things going back there?” He grinned and said, “That little fluctuation went away as soon as you opened the throttle. I’d guess that we have more energy than we have controls. We’ll have to add that to our list of problems for when we get back home. We are going to get back home aren’t we?”