Kelly Blake 3: Where the Stars Are Few and Far Between

by Rodney Smith

  The note had a receptive audience when it hit Admiral Levi’s inbox. Of course! They weren’t wed to this constant advance. They could make two beelines to G’Durin and force the K’Rang fleet to race to get there. Admiral Levi asked for a conference.

  * * * * *

  The K’Rang Armada occupied the Gamma system in the Eridanus system. Ships patrolled in orbit around the planets and throughout the system between the planets. Lieutenant Commander Watanaga had brought the Visceral into the ring of leftover bits of rock and ice that had not been incorporated into a planet. Small planetoids and asteroids provided just enough cover for the nimble Visceral to sneak into high-resolution sensor range. He sat there for three days, cataloguing and analyzing every movement of the K’Rang Armada in the system. He transmitted his report by laser comms to the Vengeance, then settled in to watch the show.

  The intel section of the 15th Battle Fleet analyzed the information from the scouts and developed a strike plan. The ten A-76 squadrons would go in first, to clear out as many as possible of the ships roaming free in the system. The A-120's would follow shortly behind, to go after the ships orbiting the uninhabited planets. Lastly, the A-100's, supported by half the fleet’s F-53's, would go after the K’Rang fleet orbiting the inhabited Human world.

  The intel section assessed that they would probably destroy or damage 50 ships of the 75 in system. Admiral Thomas added a fourth possible A-76 strike, if the situation demanded. She ordered the ships armed, but not launched until needed. She didn’t want to miss another opportunity to defeat them totally.

  * * * * *

  Tammy planned her first combat mission as squadron commander. Hers would be the lead squadron, coming in behind the A-120's. Her targets were the 27 ships orbiting the Planet Liwei. She set the target de-confliction program for eight missiles per ship. She would come in from polar north and fire all her missiles at max range and scoot back to base. They would have top cover from F-53's, but she didn’t expect any K’Rang fighters.

  As the time for take off approached, she briefed her squadron on the mission. She also welcomed Second Lieutenant Wilson, who replaced the position lost when Commander Tanaka became the wing commander. She would have 18 ships today instead of only 17.

  She geared up and went out to her ship. Finishing her checklist, she waited for the start engine signal. Both A-120 wings left the base, then it was Tammy’s turn. She left her revetment and turned onto the taxiway, lined up on the runway with her wingman, and pushed the power handles forward. She felt her body pressed back into the seat as she rose into the skies. Until the other 17 ships joined up on her, she flew a racetrack pattern. Keeping the nine up, nine down formation from before, they set course for Liwei.

  As she came into the system, she saw the devastation already caused by the A-76's and the A-120's, counting 10 major combatants burning and broken. She led her squadron to its initial point above Liwei’s north pole and turned down toward the planet, where she saw over 20 ships in high equatorial orbit, and armed her missiles. Upon reaching optimum firing range, she ripple fired her missiles, called, “Missiles away,” and waited for 17 replies. All ships reported successful firing and they turned away from the planet.

  She saw other squadrons lined up to fire, but lost them as she completed her turn toward home. She was on final approach above the Victory Base outer marker, when a missile passed close to her windscreen. She kept on approach and landed roughly, but her wingman didn’t. A handheld missile punched through his fuselage and went off in his empty missile bay. His ship rolled to the right and pinwheeled into the ground.

  Tammy kept going until she was parked in her revetment. She quickly unstrapped, raced out of her ship, flagged down a ground car, and rode out to the burning wreckage. It was obvious that no one survived. She approached until the heat made her back up, then returned to the ground car, walked around behind it, and threw up.

  Tammy was in a daze. Captain Duncan, First Lieutenant O’Reilly, Tech Sergeant Anderson, Sergeant Toney, and Airman Bailey were all gone. It was her first mission as squadron commander and her first loss. Her co-pilot, First Lieutenant Duke, found her and saw her state. He pulled a water bottle from his survival vest and handed it to her. She drank half of it and sat down heavily in the car, their faces running through her mind. First Lieutenant Duke took her to HQ.

  He got her into her office and Tammy started to tear up. Her communicator buzzed and she picked up while drying her eyes. It was the wing commander, asking her to come to his office. She thanked her co-pilot, grabbed her driver and reported to Tanaka.

  He closed the door behind her.

  “How are you doing?”

  She didn’t know what to say, and simply said, “I’ll be okay.”

  “No, you won’t. You’ll think about them for years, maybe your whole life. You’ll think why wasn’t it me. Well, from what I’m told, it almost was you. A missile just barely missed you.”

  “I know. I saw it go by.”

  “I’m calling in the Marine brigade commander and S-3 to explain how they plan to keep us secure. They’ll be here at 2000 hours. Go back, take care of your debrief, and I’ll talk to the chaplain to set up a memorial service.”

  Tammy went back to her HQ. She went into the debriefing room. It was as quiet as a church. There was none of the normal wise cracking and jest. She waited until the debriefers were through and called her officers back into the hall.

  “Commander Tanaka is setting up a memorial service. We will miss them. Try and remember them as they lived, not as they died. I have a meeting with the Marines at 2000 hours to see what went wrong. I’ll let you know in the morning how that comes out. Go take care of your crews.”

  She went to her office and shucked out of her flight gear. She sat numb until 1945, when she went to Wing HQ. The Marine brigade commander and his S-3 were there. The brigade commander expressed his sympathy for her loss and turned the meeting over to his S-3, a female major.

  She stood up. “We have the entire perimeter secured. We have an arrangement with the tower to let us know which will be the active runway so we can have our heavy battalion establish a security cone out 500 meters. Something went wrong today – either they gave us the wrong runway, or they changed runways without telling us. We saw the attack and rushed to the site. We caught five K’Rang trying to escape to the southeast. We got all five of them, if that’s any consolation.”

  Tammy looked up and said, “It isn’t. What have you done to keep this from happening again?”

  The major said, “We will put our air liaison officer in the tower to let us know when and where ships are arriving. We’ll have a heavy company along each runway, so that we can protect either runway. The other thing we will do is double our efforts to find the K’Rang holdouts. The team today was heading southeast. We’ll start looking there at first light.”

  Tammy had calmed down somewhat. She knew things like this happened. She had just hoped they would happen to someone else. She thanked the Major and Colonel and asked if there was anything more. There wasn’t and she was excused. She went back to her office and sat down to compose five messages to next of kin.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “What do you mean they’ve disappeared?”

  The Shadow Leader standing before Shadow Force Commander (Baron) G’Rof wished he could be anywhere else right now.

  “Shadow Force Commander G’Rof, the two remaining scouts monitoring the Taurus fleet report that the Human fleet has disappeared from their sensors. As you know, they were required to maintain greater distance from the fleet because of more effective counter-reconnaissance efforts by the Human scouts.”

  “The Human scouts pushed them back by patrolling further and further out from the fleet. The Human scouts powered parallel to the front of the fleet and held as the fleet passed them. They stayed in place until the scouts were 5,000,000km behind the fleet, and then powered back to the front again. This forced our scouts to a distance of 10,000,000km from the
fleet, but we could still monitor them by their engine emissions.”

  “The scouts stayed in place, as before, and fell back 5,000,000km behind the fleet, as before, but when the scouts powered forward, our scouts noticed they were no longer monitoring the engine emissions. They moved forward cautiously and could find no trace of the fleet. They searched for eight hours and could not find the fleet. They are continuing to search, but the prognosis of finding the Human fleet is bleak.”

  The Shadow Leader expected to die or be led away for execution any second, but the Baron did not fly into a rage. He instructed the Shadow Leader to continue the search and keep him informed. The Shadow Leader left and let out a deep breath. Today must be his lucky day.

  * * * * *

  Jotil Lenkva came to the Orion with translator and asked permission to come aboard. Kelly met her at the quarterdeck and escorted her to his cabin.

  Jotil Lenkva said, “Captain, we ask for some help adapting your missile component to our missile electronics. We understand the theory behind it, but have been unable to make it work. If it is possible, could it be arranged for us to meet the designer?”

  Kelly wasn’t sure, but would see if he could get the designer or someone equally expert to confer with them. He passed a message on a data device through the ring with an immediate priority. He had an answer within three hours. The designer and a team of system integrators would be at the ring in four hours. Kelly passed this info on to Jotil Lenkva.

  Jotil Lenkva arrived back in four hours with a large van. Kelly went down to meet the team at the ring. The team came through and introduced themselves. Dr. Harrison was the designer, Mr. Thompson was the lead integrator, Messers Brown and O’hara were integration team members.

  Kelly led them out and introduced them to Jotil Lenkva. He sent Lieutenant Commander Shaw with them and a translator to assist. Kelly told Jotil Lenkva they needed to be back in four hours. Kelly watched the van and wondered if he should have gone, too.

  Four hours later the van reappeared. Kelly asked Jotil Lenkva if everything was worked out to her satisfaction.

  Jotil Lenkva answered, “I believe it was. It became simple to our scientists, once someone who knew the component explained it. Dr. Harrison and his team saved us months of learning by experimentation.”

  The team entered the ship, as Jotil Lenkva thanked Kelly and left. Kelly met the team in the officers’ wardroom and asked them how it went.

  Dr. Harrison spoke for the team. “The Angaerry almost had it figured out. All we did was confirm their analysis. We walked them through the process and showed them how to build their own component to match their missile’s different electronics, voltage, and cycles. It’s a piece of cake. They did show us something of interest – a processor chip fabricator that they use to make speculative or experimental chips. We told them we could really use one of those. Don’t be surprised if a crate shows up for transport through your ring.”

  Kelly said he wouldn’t be surprised. He escorted them to the ring and let them walk through.

  * * * * *

  Mary Chen rode out with her recon platoon commander to the southeast of yesterday’s attack. The K’Rang had to be somewhere along this vector. Their armored recon vehicles made covering the distance quick and easy. They had just passed the one km distance from the attack site when all hell broke loose.

  A rocket flew in from the left ahead and the lead vehicle was thrown three meters in the air. Three recon marines were killed instantly. Another two were thrown from the vehicle. Mary held her tongue and let the commander do his job. He ordered the platoon to dismount and move left.

  Mary called for support from one of the SR-22s and dismounted with them. Mary had requested two SR-22 armed search and rescue ships from the assault support carrier’s support squadron, just for this type of situation.

  She moved through the underbrush with the platoon, looking for the ambushers. The platoon sergeant and the corpsman went to check on the lead vehicle’s crew. Mary pushed further around to the left and saw a dozen K’Rang in a line waiting for the platoon to move into their kill zone. Her disruptor carbine made short work of them. Its familiar whining sound drew a squad of Marines to her location.

  “Are you okay, ma’am?” said the squad leader when he came up to her.

  She responded that she was fine and trudged on through the brush, tracing the route used by the ambushers. The squad had trouble keeping up with her. Eventually the trail used petered out over a rock outcropping. She dropped to a knee as the SR-22 flew low overhead.

  Suddenly, the SR-22’s man gun opened up on something just over the next rise. It jinked and swerved as a missile narrowly missed them, then moved to just over Mary’s position on the outcropping.

  A call came over her communicator. “Major Chen, this is Lieutenant Commander Benson. I’m above a rock outcropping with approximately 100 K’Rang in the open just to my south.”

  “Lieutenant Commander Benson, I’m almost directly underneath you. Call in fire from above. Take them out.”

  Mary made a brief contact report to Colonel Maxwell, and crept up to look over the edge of the outcropping. The SR-22 still flew almost directly overhead. Mary saw at least a company of K’Rang in a large clearing, running for the edges. One group of K’Rang was assembling a missile launcher. She pointed them out to Benson and the SR-22’s main gun made short work of them.

  Some K’Rang directly below her position saw her and ran up the hill to attack her. Her disruptor carbine killed the leading three, and the recon squad, finally catching up with her, took out the rest.

  Mary took a radio call and yelled, “Put on your goggles, bombardment fire on the way!” The last man dropped his visor just as the bombardment fire from the orbiting frigate hit the edges of the clearing. Large swaths of trees simply disappeared, as did the K’Rang taking shelter there. Four more shots and the area below was cleared. Mary saw one problem with the disruptor guns – no bodies to search afterward if one used the wide beam setting. Mary thanked Lieutenant Commander Benson and asked him to make a wide sweep around the area before heading back to base.

  Until the platoon commander drove down to pick her up, Mary walked around in the large clearing, finding no trace of the K’Rang. She mounted up and they returned to base. Mary knew they were close, but didn’t want to take on a battalion of K’Rang with a platoon. Tomorrow she’d be back with more troops.

  * * * * *

  Kelly was impressed with the Angaerry industrial capability. Jotil Lenkva invited him along to visit the depot where the new missile components were being retrofitted to existing missiles. The depot facility had the capability to change over 1,000 missiles per day, but was limited by supply to half that. The Angaerry engineers had made the update simple. They opened an inspection port on the missile, disconnected a cable, and plugged the new component inline to each end of the cable.

  Each 500-missile lot was carried up to a waiting supply ship, which left to rearm its supported fleet or task force. The support ship returned with the unmodified missiles and the cycle started all over. With increased component manufacture, the Angaerry fleet was completely rearmed with jam resistant missiles in a week and a half. Now the Angaerry looked for a K’Rang adversary to try their new capability against.

  Jotil Lenkva was chosen to lead a flotilla against the K’Rang task force guarding the stolen worlds. Kelly and the Orion were invited to join them as an observer, but not to take part in the hostilities unless in self-defense. Kelly agreed and lifted off the next morning early to join the flotilla.

  This time there was no pretense about leaving Angaerry space and attacking from the K’Rang side. They flew straight to the frontier opposite the stolen worlds. A K’Rang task force of mainly third line destroyers and frigates orbited the former Angaerry world, Jinda. Kelly saw two destroyers and six frigates. He thought six against eight would make a good test of their missile upgrade.

  The Angaerry flotilla shot a large gap through the frontier
mines and sensors and cruised through. They increased speed to 0.9c and closed the distance with the K’Rang task force. Kelly followed a discreet distance behind.

  The K’Rang commander must not have believed that the Angaerry would dare come through the border and attack him. He was slow to organize for combat and the Angaerry were on him and engaging with missiles before he had all ships moving.

  Unlike before, the missiles did not explode or turn away. They bored into the loose K’Rang formation and destroyed five of the eight ships. Two others were damaged. The one undamaged ship and the two damaged ones fired their offensive missiles at the flotilla. Angaerry defensive missiles took out most of the missiles. Close in defensive systems took out all but one of the remainder of the missiles. That missile hit the destroyer immediately behind Jotil Lenkva’s flagship, and it was broken into large pieces by the antimatter warhead.

  A second Angaerry salvo of missiles flew in and destroyed the remaining three ships. Jotil Lenkva offered Kelly the opportunity to come in and destroy the FTL facilities. Kelly replied he would be glad to. He asked Jotil Lenkva to warn the K’Rang below to abandon all FTL ships, spaceports, and FTL support facilities.

  Kelly made two orbits, collected locations on all FTL facilities and programmed the firing computer to hit them all on his next pass. As the facilities below lined up, he ordered gunnery to open fire. Facility after facility was reduced to rubble and twisted melted metal.

  A proud and cocky Angaerry flotilla returned to Gronir in victory.

  * * * * *

  Admiral Levi was feeling pretty good. His plan to make the two combined fleets disappear was a total success. His idea to tune down the engine discharge ion guns to leave an easy trail for the K’Rang scouts was so simple a ploy that it worked. They were forced further and further back by the scout ships and gave plenty of room for the combined fleets to reactivate the ion guns to mask the trail, turn off the original course, and be out of sensor range before the K’Rang scouts knew they had changed course.