“You want to take this lot into battle? We’re fucked, and not in a way anyone’s going to enjoy,” Lin said flatly. “We’re running short an entire wing and have the lowest ratio of replacements in the fleet…and I wouldn’t want to put us in the line of fire for another week.”
“You figure the rest of the fleet’s worse.” It wasn’t a question. Of course, Lin figured Elysium’s fighter group was in the best shape.
“No one’s pure cannon fodder,” the Wing Commander said after a moment’s thought. “But none of us are where I’d like to be. We’re running up against real defenses in Leopold; they’re going to be ready for us.
“And we’re not ready for them.”
“We have to be,” Michelle said quietly. “We go to war when we have to with the crews we have, not when we’d like to with the crews we wish we had. How bad is it, Evelyn?”
Lin winced and sighed.
“The raw material is solid, and we had a decent matrix to drop them into,” she admitted. “And most of the rest of the fleet we slotted entire squadrons into, but the two new Phoenix cruisers are the only ones with intact fighter groups.
“Everyone else is either flying with a new wing, a new squadron leader, or a new wing leader. No one is going to screw up…but we’re going to lose a lot more people than we should.”
Michelle nodded with her own sigh.
“We don’t have a choice, Evelyn. The timeline is what it is.”
“Why?” Lin asked. “I haven’t been briefed on any of this shit. We’re sending our people into the fire before they’re ready and I don’t even know why!”
Michelle considered for a moment, then shrugged.
“I don’t know everything,” she admitted. “What I do know is that the entire offensive that’s been launched is scheduled to hit home on the ninth. We need Walkingstick watching his back, not attacking us when it does.
“So, the timing is the most important part of this. We have to go out.”
Lin chuckled bitterly.
“You were never high guard, were you, Vice Commodore?”
“No,” Michelle admitted. High guard were local planetary patrols, starfighters and boarding shuttles permanently dedicated to policing the orbits of inhabited worlds—the spaceborne equivalent of a coast guard.
“If you had been, you’d know the other half of that statement,” Lin, who had been a high guard squadron leader before the war, said.
“Which is?”
“We have to go out. We don’t have to come back.”
34
Leopold System
08:00 October 9, 2737 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
Alliance Forty-First Fleet
If Forty-First Fleet had been trying to be sneaky, the Shrews would have provided a brilliant opportunity. Leopold’s seventh and eight planets, Harriet and Margaret, were gas giants to put Sol’s Jupiter and Saturn to shame.
Hiding the Alcubierre emergences of an entire fleet behind them would have taken some doing, but it might have actually been possible. Most system’s planets didn’t allow for that level of stealth.
Of course, the Shrews had a shared name because they were shared an orbit, and they were currently on the far side of the Leopold System from Katrina, the habitable fourth planet. Since Katrina and Henriette, the uninhabitable but resource-rich third planet, were the focus of Leopold’s population and industry, they were also the focus of Kyle’s attack.
Eleven warships burst into reality, Q-probes firing away in the moment they emerged and scanners reaching out to find the enemies that they knew were there.
“Starfighters deploying,” Sterling reported. “Passive scanner take coming in now.”
Leopold should have both a fleet and significant fixed defenses. There were no surprises in the passive take. The data was two minutes old, though as the Q-probes got closer to the planet, the data would get fresher.
“Looks like bang on what Intelligence suggested,” Aurangzeb reported. “I’ve got three cruisers, a carrier, about twenty defensive platforms—only half appear to be fighter bases.
“One hundred Katanas on patrol. That number will start ramping up quickly. Best guess is about seven hundred and fifty fighters with heavy missile support.”
Kyle nodded, watching the data signatures continue to populate his feed as Aurangzeb’s team identified the various civilian orbit platforms as well. Leopold was the most heavily industrialized of the systems they’d moved against so far, with significant home-built defenses. Many of the fighters that they were picking up would be high guard ships, more used to being police officers than combatants.
Underestimating them could be deadly. Those pilots were fighting for their homes, their families.
“Let’s go with Course Delta-3,” he told Sterling. “Keep us on the far side of Katrina from Henriette, and watch our distance and vector from space we can jump from.”
Everything was exactly as he’d expected. It was a light-enough defense force that he could take them if he pushed, and a heavy-enough defense force that his enemies wouldn’t question him choosing to withdraw rather than take heavy losses.
If everything in Leopold was exactly what he needed…why did the hair on the back of his neck want to climb his skull?
“All fighters, form up, form up,” Michelle barked. “Falcons and Templars: primary defensive formation Epsilon-Three, two million klicks in front of the fleet. Arrows, secondary defensive formation Alpha-One; stick to the cap-ships like glue.
“Acknowledge!”
Acknowledgements flickered back from her subordinates as hundreds of starfighters leapt to her orders. It was a heady feeling—and a terrifying one. If they got the plan wrong, if they had the wrong formation or the wrong division of fighters, or if there was something they’d missed…
Two hundred Arrows formed up around Forty-First Fleet behind her, and she led four hundred Falcons and a hundred Templars forward, accelerating over twice as fast as the fleet as they opened the distance.
“Enemy starfighters deploying,” Eklund reported. “Numbers match up with three Assassins, a Lexington, and twelve Zions. Eight hundred Katanas, fifty Longbows.”
He paused.
“What about our bombers, ma’am?”
“The Admiral is hanging on to them. Just in case,” she told him. “The plan isn’t actually to take the system today, Ferdi. We’re just here to make them look.”
Eklund snorted.
“Eight hundred and fifty starfighters and three battlecruisers are definitely looking, boss,” he pointed out.
He was right. The three Assassins had formed up into a triangle formation, with the starfighters filling in the gaps to form a massive spearhead thrusting directly toward Forty-First Fleet.
It was a moving wall of antimatter fire, closing with the Alliance at two hundred gravities. As capital-ship missiles launched and ECM flared to life, that wall became a solid shield of radiation and jamming. There weren’t going to be many long-range hits today.
“Fleet is opening fire with missiles,” Eklund told her. “What do we do?”
“Hold course and plan,” she said calmly. “We’ll swing around Katrina, draw their forces out and chop of chunks of them as we swing by.”
“We could totally take them,” her gunner objected.
“Probably,” Michelle agreed. “But the Admiral doesn’t want to lose more people than he has to over a system the Alliance doesn’t want or need.
“So, we go by the plan.”
“Do we have any Q-probes in position to look up dear Admiral Hopper’s skirt?” Kyle asked conversationally. “I don’t like the way our Terran friend is blocking our view of a nice, shiny chunk of space.”
“We’ve accounted for all of his ships and starfighters,” Aurangzeb pointed out. “What could he be hiding?”
“Ships we don’t know about,” Kyle replied. “We’ve seen everything we knew about, but I expected Leopold to be reinforced. While we’re at it, get me a probe hooked
around Henriette. We haven’t seen the dark side of that rock yet, and my paranoia is itchy.”
His chief of staff and operations officer both chuckled at his joke—but they also got to work.
The Q-probes were launched in waves: a first wave that blasted through the system at the same thousand gravities as a missile, then turned around and came back; three more waves that did much the same thing at lower accelerations; and a final wave of probes that slowed themselves into stealth position across the star system, providing a live view of a battlespace that would, at a minimum, be two light-minutes across.
His staff went to work on the third wave, adjusting the courses of some Q-probes and accelerating others, wrapping them around towards Kyle’s blind spots.
“Sending probes B-18 through B-22 on a suicide run into the fleet,” Aurangzeb reported after a minute. “Give me five minutes and I’ll know what Hopper has under his skirt. Three of the C-wave probes are looping Henriette. That’ll be fifteen minutes.”
“First missile impacts in twenty-five minutes. They’ll have torpedo range on our forward fighter formation in thirty-three.”
Kyle nodded his understanding, watching the drama continue to unfold. They’d thrown over a thousand missiles at Task Force Leopold so far, and he considered that expenditure for a moment.
“Hold the missile fire after ten salvos,” he ordered. “Two thousand missiles have a better than fifty-fifty chance of clearing those battlecruisers out of the fight, and I’d like to hang on to our other ninety salvos.
“Just in case.”
“Understood. Passing the order,” Aurangzeb replied. “What about the bombers?”
They still had a hundred and sixty bombers tucked away aboard his four carriers, loaded into the launch tubes and ready to go.
“Keep them on standby,” he ordered. “Something doesn’t feel right…”
“Son of the darkest Void!” Sterling suddenly cursed, the officer staring into space at a data feed only he could see. “Probe B-20 made it through their defenses. They’ve got six more starships in that formation.”
“Ah,” Kyle said levelly. “Yes, that will be a problem, won’t it?”
“How did we miss an entire fleet?” Aurangzeb demanded, the operations officer turning to glare at the closest members of his analysis team.
“Blame no one,” Kyle snapped. “But yes, I would like to know the answer to that as well.”
The ops officer turned an apologetic glance on Kyle, then stepped out of the core of the flag deck to confer with his team. As they spoke, both audibly and through their dedicated implant channel, Kyle turned his own attention to the oncoming Commonwealth fleet.
They clearly realized that the drone had revealed their secret before its death. The game was up—and so was their deception. Nine starships now spread out, with another sixty starfighters blazing away from the two immense, modern, sixty-million-cubic-meter warships at the center of the formation.
“Two Herculeses. Four Resolutes. Three Assassins,” Sterling said quietly from Kyle’s right elbow. “Plus the Lexington that’s still hanging back to reinforce the orbital platforms. We’re a more modern fleet, but they’re almost as big.”
“We could probably take them,” Kyle replied, watching the angles, studying the numbers. “Focus missile fire on the Herculeses, swing our course out to force them to engage with starfighters only at first, then swing back in and send our battlecruisers and battleships in.
“I’d back two Titans against four Resolutes any day of the week. But…” He shrugged. “We’d lose three quarters or more of our fighters and probably at least two of the battlecruisers. This system isn’t worth it.”
His chief of staff chuckled.
“And you’re tempted anyway.”
“I didn’t earn my reputation by turning away from a fight,” Kyle admitted. “There’s some truth to those who call me a glory hound…but this isn’t a fight we need to have today.
“Aurangzeb!” The ops officer turned back to him. “Do we have an answer?”
“They were hiding in the defense platforms,” the Senior Fleet Commander replied. “We’re not entirely sure how, but they’d disguised them as much smaller immobile platforms. They waited until Hopper had his arrowhead formation up to cover their engines and then came after us.”
“Clever,” Kyle allowed. “Almost something I would do.” He shook his head.
“Not clever enough,” he concluded. “This looks far too much like a fair fight to me. Fleet orders! Course Zulu-Seven. Get us out of here!”
BB-285 Saint Michael
“They’re running.”
“Of course they are,” James Walkingstick agreed. It had been too long since he’d stood on the flag deck of a ship of war as she went into action. “Roberts isn’t going to fight a fair fight. Hell, I’m not even sure the arrogant bastard planned on fighting anyone here.”
The Marshal smiled at his operations officer, Commodore Clarette MacGinnis.
“Of course, he came here anyway, and that’s the last mistake he got to make,” he said quietly. “Update Tasker on his new vector and then pass the order to TF Thirty-Eight-Two.
“Initiate Mouse Trap Bravo.”
They hadn’t managed to localize the Q-probes vectoring to peek behind Henriette, but they’d got enough blips to be sure the probes were on their way. That Roberts hadn’t already turned to run—or chosen a different course—told Walkingstick he hadn’t seen TF 38.2 yet.
Now, mighty engines came to life and launch tubes flared as the second jaw to his trap swung into motion. Four Volcanoes and four Lexingtons put a thousand starfighters and four hundred bombers into space.
Two Herculeses added another sixty starfighters, a tiny but important portion of the trap, though he’d use their missile launchers more.
Saint Michael, Saint Lawrence, Saint Columbus and Santa Maria came to life at the heart of the fleet, four of the Commonwealth’s most modern battleships—and every Saint under Walkingstick’s command outside of Tasker’s fleet—now charging at Vice Admiral Roberts.
“He can run,” James declared as his flagship lurched into the action. “But if he was going to hide, he’d have come in elsewhere. And he only has so many options left, people—and we’re ready for them all!”
35
Leopold System
08:45 October 9, 2737 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
Alliance Forty-First Fleet
“Oh, Starless Void.”
Aurangzeb’s oath echoed through the renewed silence in Elysium’s flag bridge as the second Commonwealth fleet emerged from behind Leopold’s fifth planet. A thousand-plus starfighters led the way, screaming on an intercept vector for Forty-First Fleet at five hundred gravities.
“Run the numbers,” Kyle ordered. “Will they intercept us before we reach the A-S safe zone?”
He suspected he already knew the answer. If there were that many Saints over there, there were only two people who could be in command…and he would bet stellars to peanuts that it was Walkingstick himself.
It seemed they’d achieved the objective of get the Marshal’s attention, all right.
“The starships will not make lance range before we can warp space,” his operations officer concluded after a few moments. “They are already in missile range. Both forces are launching.”
“Of course they are,” Kyle allowed. “The fighters, Aurangzeb?”
“They’ll reach us if we don’t change course,” his ops officer confirmed.
Kyle sighed, running numbers in his implants and throwing them up on the main holographic display.
“All right. Let’s assume that this actually is Hopper but reinforced,” he began, highlighting the first fleet. “Mostly battleships and local starfighters. Call them Bogey Alpha. We can take them, but it will hurt.”
A dark red cone lit up the projection. Two larger cones surrounded it, one covering almost the entire inner system.
“This is their interception zone.
We can break free of it, avoid a lance or starfighter missile engagement with them, relatively easily. They’ll hit us with missiles almost no matter what we do, and a lot of our potential course changes put us in range of bomber torpedoes.”
He added a second cone, dark orange and then lighter shades of orange.
“Bogey Bravo,” he concluded. “My guess is Walkingstick is in command himself. Modern battleships, modern carriers, bad news all around. We can’t evade their missiles, but we can evade their starfighters…but only by accepting torpedo strikes from both fleets.”
A blue cone materialized on the screen.
“This is our maneuver zone,” he concluded. A small, dark blue, irregular shape appeared in the center of the cone. “This course, a modified version of Zulu-Eleven, will avoid starfighter missile range and lance range of both fleets and fighter forces.
“We’ll take their missile fire for just over an hour and we’ll take the full brunt of both fighter forces’ torpedo fire, but we’ll avoid both a dogfight and a true ship-to-ship engagement.”
Kyle shook his head.
“They left us an opening,” he murmured. “Why?”
“We were about to identify their location anyway,” Sterling pointed out. “They had to know we were about to maneuver to evade them anyway, a few more minutes…”
“That’s not right,” Kyle replied. “A few more minutes wouldn’t have changed anything. They needed another thousand kilometers a second of velocity. They could have used Henriette and the Shrews to hide their drive signatures, built up that velocity with only a minimal chance of being seen.”
“We don’t have a lot of choice, sir,” his chief of staff said. “If we do anything else, we go headlong into one of their fleets.”
“And if we let them herd us, do you want to bet how that ends?” the Admiral asked. Logic said to punch through the gap, take whatever Walkingstick was planning because it couldn’t be worse than what he knew was coming.
His instincts, however…those had made him the Stellar Fox.
Operation Medusa Page 22
