Solomon Family Warriors II

by Robert H. Cherny

She turned to leave the room retrieving her knife as she went.

  “Rescue would be the humane thing to do,” Science Officer Mendelssohn said quietly.

  One of the other pilots commented, “You know, we don’t have any way to get someone out of one our own ships if it becomes disabled. We probably should think about rescue.”

  And so it was that the planet Eretz became the pioneer in space ship-to-ship rescue. Within six months, they had configured four ships for rescues of various sizes. The largest was a cargo ship the size of Greg’s capable of rescuing the largest of the passenger liners. The accommodations were hardly luxurious, but rescue ships were not party boats. Rather than keep the rescue developments secret, they published the specifications in technical journals and made drawings available to any ship builder who wished to incorporate the rescue technology into their designs. Shipyards all over the Federation were flooded with requests to modify existing ships to accommodate the new rescue equipment.

  Greg and Avi, who had shepherded the project from the beginning, were publicly given credit for its success. Rose and the Cadets worked with the prototype testing and re-testing to determine the safety and effectiveness of the design.

  The key component in the technology was a two meter diameter flexible tube that spanned the gap from one ship’s airlock to the other. It could be inflated and passengers could pull themselves along from one ship to the other using the ridges in the tube’s sides. The hard part had been designing the system so that it did not require a person in an EVA suit to make the connections. In the end, the design had to be simple enough and easy enough for Rose to make the links and initiate an evacuation.

  Several of the engineers and designers who had worked on the project were honored in trade magazines and at engineering society conventions. The publicity helped the planet’s public image, but only deepened the Swordsmen resolve to punish those who had made them look so inhumane.

  ERETZ - CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE TWO YEAR MORATORIUM on military equipment purchases by the Swordsmen expired. They rapidly fulfilled contracts they had negotiated in advance and quickly assembled a substantial fleet. Less than a year after the moratorium ended, they had assembled a force of over a hundred ships and had trained over twenty thousand Marines. The force was scattered over two dozen planets and escaped notice of all but the Eretz intelligence service. When the time came to launch the attack, rather than drawing attention to themselves by jumping directly to their destination, the Swordsmen ships jumped to a location beyond where the Federation Space Force’s sensors could find them and then jumped back in to their attack position.

  The Eretz Combined Defense Forces had not been sitting still while the Swordsmen armed themselves. They had increased their P I force to a hundred warships. Their rescue vehicles looked more like prison ships than like luxury liners. The armament on the P I ships had been doubled to twenty-four internally and twenty-four externally mounted missiles and forty-eight lasers. The lasers taxed even the larger reactors when they were all firing, but even under full load, the ships could make the short hyper jump without damaging the reactors. During readiness tests they had discovered that the P I ship was immune to the electronic Disruptor missile. The Swordsmen were known to have at least two short jump capable P I’s. Only traditional missiles could be used on them. Destroying one took multiple direct strikes unless one was lucky enough to get the “up the pipes” shot in which case a single heat seeker could to the job. The P I’s electronics, designed for a more hostile environment than any other ship ever built, could withstand the Disruptor until the missile exhausted its batteries. The joke among the pilots was that whoever designed the P I must have been doing some seriously heavy drugs. Greg and Avi both owed their lives to the obsessive behavior of the P I ships’ designers.

  The Eretz P I ships were deployed on the assumption that the invaders would jump directly into the system and immediately strike at the most sensitive targets as had been determined by their previous recon probes. Repeated unmanned Swordsman probes alerted the defensive forces to the potential and preferred targets. In other systems, the patrol ships were lightly armed highly maneuverable picket ships that operated within a short range of a mother ship. The Eretz defensive plan had its compliment of pickets, but primarily used the larger, more heavily armed P I which, due to its monstrous reactor, could match the picket for maneuverability. The defenders sat quietly, patiently floating in their respective orbits radiating as little emissions as possible to minimize their ability to be located. They waited for weeks for the attack they knew would come sooner or later.

  They were right. Faye Anne was the first to draw blood. She had analyzed everything she could get her hands on to determine where the Swordsmen would strike first and even what strike angle they would prefer. She chose a spot in space where, if she understood Swordsman psychology as well as she thought she did, the first ship would appear. A foreign P I ship materialized in front of her position close enough for her to see that it lacked the Eretz battle markings. The Eretz ships had the Hebrew word for “life” in bold letters on their flight surfaces and on their fuselages. The foreign P I ship carried a pilot-less drone attached to its airlock. Faye Anne quickly identified the drone as one of the nuclear warhead carriers. With its back to her, the foreign P I launched the drone and four missiles at the freight depot. Faye Anne had planned for exactly this scenario. She had loaded her four missile tubes with heat seeking armor piercing missiles. They were programmed to fire three seconds apart from a single button command. She quickly smashed the fire button and four missiles jumped in sequence from her ship’s tubes. The first detonated against the foreign P I ship’s propulsion system clearing a hole for the second. The second missile followed the first and detonated behind the propulsion system and tore it away. The third missile blasted away the reactor shielding and the fourth penetrated the reactor. The reactor detonated and the ship disintegrated into a rapidly expanding cloud of gas and debris. Faye Anne quickly spun her ship as she had been trained to let the heat shield on the ship’s underside take the brunt of the force of the explosion.

  Alerted by a “screamer” signal Faye Anne initiated when she spotted the intruder, the defensive laser and missile batteries on the surface brought their force to bear on the incoming drone and the four missiles. The intense barrage intercepted and destroyed the missiles and the drone far enough away that they could do no damage.

  Reuben was next. The foreign P I materialized in front of him face to face. He did not wait for the other ship to fire first. He launched two missiles. The first passed through the view-port and detonated inside the flight deck. The second missile passed through the hole left by the first and penetrated the ship’s munitions magazine. The ship disintegrated in the resulting explosion.

  As was Greg’s custom, the ships were in communication each with their own frequencies supported by a redundant network of repeaters. The foreign P I ships started to rain in. Defending P I ships materialized all around the attackers. All of the Eretz ships were short jump capable. Only the first two of the Swordsman P I ships into the system had been the short jump capable model, and they had been eliminated in the first few minutes of the battle. The defenders maintained their discipline as the dogfight developed. Constantly chattering, they reminded Greg of a basketball team as they worked their defense. The plan was to shoot only the P I’s with live missiles. All the other ships were to get the Disruptor. Where the defenders had a single type of ship, the Swordsmen had a wide variety of ships that included destroyers, non short jump capable P I’s and smaller scouts.

  Greg, Avi, Wendy and Rachel stood away from the primary targets and watched the unfolding battle. Their job was not to deal with the initial wave of assault craft. They had a different task. Abraham rode with Greg. Forty of the Swordsman warships had entered the system when Abraham said, “I have their origination point. Shall we go?”

  “How far?” Greg asked.

  “Two hours in hyper,�
�� Abraham replied.

  Greg relayed the navigation information down the fiber optic to Avi, Rachel and Wendy. Science Officer Mendelssohn rode in Avi’s back seat. Mimi was with Rachel and Esther was with Wendy. The P I’s in the main group had been armed with eight Disruptors in the external racks and forty standard missiles under the assumption that they would first engage other P I’s for which they needed the standard missiles. This assumption had been correct. Greg, Avi, Rachel and Wendy were armed with forty Disruptors and eight standard missiles. Greg initiated the jump.

  They dropped out of hyper drive where Abraham’s calculations led him to believe the tenders were located. They found an armada of twenty troop transport ships in formation surrounded by a like number of destroyers. There were no P I’s. This was going to be relatively easy. Greg waited until the destroyers scrambled in his direction.

  “Down the middle,” Greg said and initiated the short jump. He separated the four ships from the fiber optic when they exited the jump. Taking their positions, they proceeded to fire Disruptors into the cargo ships. The destroyers had been caught off guard. When the formation appeared in their space, they had immediately scrambled to intercept, but that had been the wrong thing to do. They were racing at full throttle to face an enemy that was no longer there. Their enemy was politely walking down the line of cargo ships they were supposed to be protecting disabling the behemoths one at a time.

  Communication with each cargo ship halted abruptly as the Disruptor missiles found their mark. Twenty troop transport cargo ships, twenty missiles, twenty dead collections of space going hardware. The Solomon family P I’s, flying in formation, turned to address the destroyers. Twenty destroyers not capable of short hyper jumps turned one at a time to face four P I’s that were. The Disruptor had the advantage that a near miss was as devastating to a ship like a destroyer as a direct hit, and a Disruptor could kill more than one ship at a time. Greg jumped into the middle of the turning destroyers and fired a volley of Disruptor missiles as he spun his ship to give each missile its best shot. Then just as quickly, he jumped again. Ten of the twenty destroyers were dead, intact with live crews, but still dead. Greg still had eight conventional missiles and he was behind the destroyers.

  Avi jumped next. She jumped behind the destroyers that were now desperately trying to turn and face their adversary who had come at them from a different direction. She took out six of the remaining ten destroyers. Rachel and Wendy drove forward and took out two apiece. Within the space of a single hour the Swordsman Armada had been defeated. The destroyers drifted apart, their inertia carrying them away from the battle scene and off to the vastness of space where soon they would be too hard to find to rescue with only their distress beacons to direct would be rescuers.

  Silently the conquerors surveyed the vanquished.

  “Dad,” Rachel called, “we can’t leave them like this.”

  “I know. One of us has to go for help,” Greg answered.

  “I think help will be too late,” Rachel said. “These destroyers are going to drift so far away we’ll never find them.”

  “Can we use our hyper waves to push them toward their mother ships?” Wendy asked.

  “Not without killing the crews,” Abraham said.

  “Wish there was some way we could take control of their drives,” Esther thought out loud.

  “The drives themselves aren’t damaged,” Officer Mendelssohn commented, “only the controls. They are like in a maintenance over ride.”

  “Abraham, if we hooked our fiber to the destroyers, could you control the drives?” Greg asked.

  Abraham thought for a moment. “As long as none of the TTL circuitry is damaged. Navigation, fire control and communications should be the only systems that were killed.”

  “It’s worth a shot,” Greg said.

  Greg hyper jumped to a point immediately ahead of the destroyer that appeared to be in the greatest danger of sliding off into the cosmos. The fiber optic quickly connected, and Abraham transmitted the codes to the destroyer’s systems. The reactor restarted, and the ship appeared to be responding to his control.

  “I’ve got it,” Abraham said, “now what do we do with it?”

  “Park it next to the mother ship. They can operate their steering jets manually and dock. They should be better off docked than drifting away by themselves.”

  Avi took off after the next destroyer. Wendy called, “Well, since you geniuses never saw fit to equip either my ship or Rachel’s with fibers, how about we go home and get help. You can stay here and play space cowboy. Whoopie ti yi yo get along little doggie!”

  “Very funny!” Avi shot back. “Go get help.”

  “Rachel,” Wendy called. “We better go in with our transponders screaming or Faye Anne is likely to shoot our scrawny asses out of the sky.”

  “Good point. You go first!”

  “Ha, Ha! Bye!” Wendy jumped for home. A few minutes later Rachel followed.

  When Rachel and Wendy arrived, the fight was over. Faye Anne was an ace. She had destroyed five enemy P I ships. She had seemed to know where they would show up next and was always ready. She and her back seat, a tiny girl named Deborah, actually seemed to enjoy the battle. They could be heard over the comm hooting and hollering every time anyone made a hit. Reuben had destroyed two and assisted with two of Faye Anne’s. Rashi had destroyed two but had taken laser hits and had to make an emergency landing at the freight depot. David had destroyed one, but his genius appeared to be his ability to set his adversary up to the point where one of his friends could hit it. He was credited with five assists. They lost five ships. Ten of their friends would not make it home.

  Wendy and Rachel announced their request for twenty fiber optic equipped P I ships to report to the location where their parents were rounding up the destroyers. Twenty P I ships whisked off one at a time to perform the rescue. The remainder established a new patrol pattern in case the attack they had just fended off was not the only one planned. Six hours later, the first of the captive troop transport cargo ships arrived in the system.

  Admiral Sherman took command of the transfer operation. The cargo ships were marshaled to the freight depot where EVA suited Marines in full battle armor supervised the disarming of their captives and transfer to a series of large empty maintenance hangars. It took eighteen hours to process all eleven thousand of the captives. Once the Marines had inspected the transports for weapons, the captives were allowed to return to retrieve personal effects, bedding and clothes. This process took another two days during which time the captives were provided “MRE” meals ready to eat.

  The empty transports were parked in orbit around the freight depot. The captives were transferred to tropical islands and provided materials with which to assemble shelters. The processing had involved the captives filling out a personal data form on which they listed their name, rank, military ID number and optionally a next of kin to notify that they were safe if not free to leave.

  The forms were compiled. The files were loaded on to data modules and the modules were sent to several locations including Federation headquarters, Federation Space Force headquarters, the head of the Swordsman church and several news media outlet home offices. The Sisters of Mercy were notified, but upon determining that the captives were in no danger of anything more severe than sunburn, elected to focus their energies elsewhere.

  ERETZ - CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  EIGHT MONTHS AFTER THE BATTLE for Eretz ended, a Federation Space Force battle group requested permission via courier missile to enter the system. They stood off at a respectful distance while they requested escort and a guarantee of safe passage. Greg, Avi, Wendy, Rachel, Faye Anne, Reuben, Rashi and David rode out to meet them with their respective fire control assistants in their back seats securely enclosed with their display screens in battle configuration. Greg suspected a trap so they traveled fully armed with their weapons pods extended.

  When the contingent of P I’s from Eretz arrived on site, they were
hailed on an open frequency. “This is Admiral Linda Dankese, Federation Space Force requesting permission to enter the system.”

  Greg surveyed the impressive inventory of military hardware arrayed in the darkness of space before him.

  “Admiral Dankese, please form up in the vicinity of the message courier beacon.” He gave the coordinates. “Admiral Sherman requests the honor of your presence and that of your senior officers at mess at the freight depot this evening at 2000 hours. He has requested that at least one senior officer from each of your ships try to attend.”

  “It will be my honor indeed. We will do our best to accommodate the Admiral’s request.”

  The party that night in the quickly converted maintenance hangar went into the small hours of the morning. As the party wound down and the Federation officers drifted off in the direction of their ships, Admiral Dankese pulled Admiral Sherman aside for a private chat.

  The following day, the Space Force and Federation Marines started repatriating eleven thousand Swordsman personnel. To a man, they looked well tanned, fit and very bored. Space flight technicians began repairs to the captured ships so they could be transported and impounded at Federation facilities. A small freight container was delivered to Admiral Sherman’s office.

  Once he had inspected the contents of the container, Admiral Sherman called his family to his office. He called Abraham and told him to bring his family. He called Greg and summoned the family. Lastly he called David, his father having passed away and asked him to bring his family.

  On the floor of his office were six regulation gray Federation Space Force footlockers. He asked Rachel, Wendy, Reuben, Rashi, Faye Anne and David to line up in front of his desk. “First, I have some sad news. Our dear friend Admiral Davidson has passed away. Admiral Dankese will assume his duties upon her return to the station. Admiral Dankese brought other news. Greg and Avi, you have been invited to teach at the advanced pilot school on Homestead.”