The pirate ship had been on a vector away from Avalon when she’d opened fire, and had promptly demonstrated that she was rated for the same tier two acceleration plateau as the old carrier. She was accelerating away at two hundred and ten gravities, slowly but surely adding to her velocity away from the pursuing Federation ship.
“Avalon is not going to catch her,” Kyle told his people grimly. “The Captain tells me that by the time the bandit is clear enough of Hessian for them to be comfortable using the main guns, she’ll be far enough away that her demonstrated deflectors will be enough to stand off even our new batteries.”
“So we get no support from the old girl?” Mendez asked. “Typical Navy.”
“Hardly, Commander,” Kyle said sharply. “We’ll co-ordinate a mass missile strike – Avalon will fire once the target is two hundred thousand kilometers from the planet.”
That made perfect sense to Michelle – if she’d thought about it, she probably shouldn’t have fired her own short-range missiles this close to Hessian. A one-gigaton explosion in even a middle orbit could cause havoc with the satellite network and planetary communications.
“Conveniently, those birds will pass us just as we hit a hundred thousand kilometers – which is what my starfighter is telling me is the range of our missiles under these conditions,” he continued. “Watch your sixes and keep your eyes peeled – I don’t trust those other buggers to stay tied up with Rokos and the others!”
Michelle focused on the scanners showing space around them. With a missile strike as the main attack plan, covering everyone else who still had missiles seemed like their best plan.
“Deveraux,” she said quietly. “Keep our sensors trained on the starfighters. Looks like we default to the backdoor.”
“They look busy to me, boss,” the gunner replied.
“Let’s keep an eye on them anyway,” Michelle told her. “Unless you want to explain to the CAG how some two-bit pirate snuck up on us?”
Hessian System
09:42 September 5, 2735 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
SFG-001 Actual – Falcon-C type Command Starfighter
His implants gave Kyle a nearly god-like view of the battlespace. Every starfighter’s sensors were linked back to Avalon via tightbeam laser-coms, and the carrier itself was linked to his command starfighter by a Q-com link.
That link carried the sensor data from every one of his forty-plus starfighters, plus the take from the carrier’s own powerful sensors. In a battle with a larger scope, the carrier would deploy some of her scant supply of Q-com equipped drones to provide a real-time view of part of the entire star system.
Four of his squadrons were engaged with the pirate starfighters. Echo Squadron had lost four of their number before the other squadrons engaged, but the pirates were down ten ships – including three of the stolen Cobras.
The remainder of his force was burning hard after the pirate ship. Part of him still found it hard to believe such a thing existed, but there was something going on. There were enough manufacturing and storage facilities in Hessian orbit to make blowing away the station profitable – but it still seemed excessive to Kyle.
“SFG One Actual, this is Avalon Guns,” Kelly Mason interrupted his thoughts. “We show Bandit One clear of Hessian. Launching in ten, watch your scopes.”
Moments after she’d finished speaking, the sensor feed from Avalon reported the launch of eight heavy capital ship missiles.
The Starfires carried by his starfighter massed twenty tons apiece and were powerful, terrifying weapons. The Jackhammer missiles carried by Federation capital ships massed two hundred tons. Their endurance was measured in hours, and their terminal velocity from rest in percentages of lightspeed. The Jackhammer’s ECM and ECCM were better and their onboard computers were smarter.
For all that, the two missiles shared an identical warhead. If allowed an hour of flight time, any warhead on the Jackhammer was redundant – and even Avalon’s neutronium armor wouldn’t withstand a gigaton-range antimatter explosion.
The missiles had twice the acceleration of his starfighters, and crossed the distance to his squadron at a terrifying pace. Even knowing that the missiles were smart enough to avoid hitting his own people, they were scary.
“Watch that pirate’s guns,” he ordered his people, putting action to his words and beginning to random-walk. “Stand by to fire missiles in concert with Avalon’s birds.”
He suspected that somewhere, in one of the many hundreds of treaties that defined the relationships between star nations, there was something that required him to demand the surrender of the ship that had destroyed Hessian Orbital before he blew them to hell.
Kyle didn’t bother to look it up. He spent the time instead calculating the exact moment his people had to fire to co-ordinate the time on target salvo.
They were close enough now that the pirate ship began to open fire. Positron lances swept through space, the ninety kiloton-per-second guns the Commonwealth and many others used as anti-fighter weapons.
He smiled coldly as one of Stanford’s pilots missed their random-walk and crossed into the path of one of the beams – to be saved by her deflectors. The Federation had heavily upgraded the electromagnetic deflectors mounted on the Falcons over the last generation of starfighters, and the pirates had overestimated the range they could hit his people at.
“Alpha, Bravo, all ships,” he said aloud, letting the computer open the channels once more. “Launch full salvo on my mark… Mark!”
Fourteen ships each fired four missiles apiece. Fifty-six Starfire missiles leapt into space, on vectors that would bring them to the target within seconds of Avalon’s heavy missiles.
“Flight Engineers, cover them with your ECM,” Kyle continued. “Gunners, ride them in. Pilots – don’t let that bastard touch you!”
Missiles and starfighters shot through space, and more and more beams of positrons began to glitter between the stars. Kyle’s ships were still well out of their own range, but they were rapidly approaching the distance at which the raider’s guns could touch them, deflectors or no.
Unlike the Jackhammers, his missiles needed to be covered by the fighters’ electronic counter measures and guided by the fighters’ computers. He couldn’t pull his people out, even though he knew some wouldn’t survive the attack.
Even as he twisted his starfighter through a series of random maneuvers intended to throw off the pirates’ targeting software, he watched his people with pride. Their formation might have looked like a chaotic mess to an outsider, but there was purpose to it.
They really had learned everything he had set out to teach them, and now it was making the difference between life and death.
The pirate ship was growing closer, and the seconds were ticking down. Positron lances flickered closer and closer, trying to box in his starfighters – and mostly failing, as his people random-walked out of the boxes with practiced skill.
Their luck could only last so long. A starfighter died. Then another. A third – and Kyle knew the pirate was doomed. Even if they somehow stopped the missiles, they couldn’t stop the starfighters either – and the Falcons’ positron lances would rip her to shreds.
The missiles crossed some invisible line in space, and the pirate’s positron lances started targeting them – leaving the fighters for the more immediate threat. As soon as they did, Kyle triggered a command in the heavy Jackhammer missiles.
The entire battlespace around the missiles disintegrated into a hash of jamming even on his screens. Focused electromagnetic pulses blasted forward from the heavy missiles, and massively powerful transmitters sent out immense quantities of static.
His people’s missiles couldn’t duplicate the sheer power of the Jackhammers, but they added their own contribution, turning the pirate’s defensive efforts into a disorganized mess.
It was a testament to the people who’d retrofitted the ship that they still stopped almost all of the Starfires.
Only
two Starfires and four Jackhammers made it through. Six one-gigaton warheads went off as one, wiping the pirate ship from the face of the Hessian system.
Chapter 17
Hessian System
09:55 September 5, 2735 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
SFG-001 Actual – Falcon-C type Command Starfighter
With the pirate freighter gone, Kyle turned his attention back towards his other four squadrons going after the pirate starfighters. Even with the feed from every one of the ships feeding through Avalon’s computers, the battlespace around the rest of the Starfighter Group was a mess of jamming and radiation.
Most of the jamming was originating from his people’s Falcons, which were demonstrating the superiority of their electronic warfare suites over the older starfighters. Even the Cobras, solid sixth generation fighters, were outmatched by the seventh generation Falcons.
What was clear even through the jamming, though, was that the pirate wing had had enough. Only four of the original ten Cobras remained, and fourteen of the other thirty ships had gone down with them. Half of the pirate’s numbers were debris, and they were turning tail.
All of the ships, despite their varying ages and origins, had been retrofitted to match the Cobras’ four hundred and fifty gravity acceleration. With their carrier gone, all twenty remaining ships were blazing for the outer system with every ounce of thrust they had.
“This is Rokos,” Echo Squadron’s commander’s voice came over Kyle’s communicator. The other man sounded tired, but eager – the best you could hope for after losing half of your squadron. “The bastards are making a run for it. Permission to pursue?”
“Negative, Flight Commander,” Kyle told him, running the vectors through his implant. “Let them go, but follow them. Give them a two hundred gee advantage.”
“Why the hell would I let them go?” his junior demanded. “They can’t outrun us!”
“We’ve taken enough losses for today, Russell,” Kyle said quietly. “Let’s consolidate the Group before we run them down – we’ve got a fifty gravity edge, and we’ve got thirty-eight fighters to their twenty. One clean pass and it’s over – I won’t risk people when I can spend time.”
There was silence for a moment, then a crisp and apologetic “Understood, sir.”
“Don’t worry, Commander. They have nowhere to run,” the CAG reminded Rokos. “Without their carrier, their only hope is to find somewhere to hide – so don’t let up on them.
“Just stay the hell out of range.”
Hessian System
11:00 September 5, 2735 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
SFG-001 Actual – Falcon-C type Command Starfighter
It took Kyle’s two squadrons just over an hour of maneuvering at their full five hundred gravities to catch up to and match vectors with the pursuing squadrons. As the fighters slotted into their usual twisted multi-dimensional ‘formation,’ he raised Rokos again.
“I assume tactical command, Flight Commander Rokos,” he said calmly and formally.
“You have command, sir,” Rokos accepted.
“How are you holding up?” Kyle asked softly. The channel was only between them.
“I will feel better once we have turned these cowardly scum into ashes,” the other officer said grimly.
“We want at least some alive,” Kyle warned. “I am going to demand their surrender – hell, I’m surprised they haven’t surrendered already.”
“They’re heading for Hessian IV’s Trojan cluster,” Rokos pointed out. “If they get there far enough ahead of us, they can hide in the debris field. Lock to a rock and go cold, we might miss them even knowing where they are.”
Kyle checked. The trailing Trojan cluster – asteroids gathered in a point of low gravity created by the interaction between Hessian IV, a massive gas giant, and its sun – was roughly fifty light minutes away from the inhabited planet. Even with the head start the pirates had, they should bring the starfighters into range in a little over four and half hours – and still a million kilometers short of the cluster.
“If that was their plan, then luck was not on their side today,” he said grimly. “And I intend to make damn sure of it.”
“With you all the way, CAG. Let’s finish them.”
Hessian System
13:00 September 5, 2735 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
SFG-001 Alpha Actual – Falcon-type Starfighter
Michael Stanford watched the pirate starfighters flee before Avalon’s fighter group with a distinct sense of unease. The whole stunt didn’t make any sense to him – why had they blown away the entire space station with a Federation carrier right there?
Unless…
“They knew everything we were supposed to be,” he said aloud.
“Sorry, boss?” his gunner asked. For all that most communication went through the network, his gunner’s station was only about three meters away from him.
“If we’d had the fighter wing we had before the refit, what would have happened when those pirates hit us?” Michael asked softly.
“That bunch against our old Badgers? They’d have ripped us to pieces!” the gunner replied.
“And eaten Avalon for breakfast,” Stanford finished. “These pirates knew what fighters we were supposed to have – they would never have risked killing the station and Jäger if they didn’t.”
The other man in the cockpit was silent, but Stanford’s brain ran in rapid circles.
The pirates had the fighters that Vice Commodore Larson had sold. They’d known what Larson’s ship was meant to have been carrying in terms of fighters and weapons – they’d been wrong, but their intel had only been a few months out of date.
Randall had said it was governments and corporations buying the starfighters, not pirates, but he could have been wrong – and Larson could have sold intelligence as well, figuring knowledge of Avalon was a harmless bit of profit.
Stanford looked at the image of the system his implant was laying out in his mind. These pirates were smart and capable – they had managed to acquire top-line starfighters and detailed intelligence. They could do the math on whether they’d reach the cluster before the Federation fighters caught up with them.
If they couldn’t hide, what did they expect to gain from running?
With their carrier gone, the pirates could only escape by ditching their ships and sneaking out on civilian transit or meeting another ship to pick them up.
That thought echoed in Stanford’s head as he looked at Hessian’s trailing Trojans. It was a denser cluster of asteroids than most, with a high heavy metal content that was making a mess of the Starfighter Group’s long-range sensors. If the pirates made it to the cluster, they could shut down and hide with ease. An entire starship could hide in that mess.
And the pirates needed to leave the system.
“CAG, we have a problem,” Stanford snapped into a channel that linked him directly to Roberts. “They’re not running from us – they’re running to someone. A friend – a friend with a real ship hiding in that cluster of heavy metal rocks.”
There was a long pause on the channel, an unusual one for the Wing Commander, then Kyle responded.
“Damn,” he said softly. “Didn’t even cross my mind. Well done, Michael – I’ll have Avalon pulse them with the shipboard array.”
Avalon’s immense radar arrays were orders of magnitude more powerful than the active sensors on the Falcons. The high powered pulse that followed scrambled Stanford’s sensors for a second as it washed over them.
Then the return rippled back through the squadron. Each individual fighter’s sensors were weak, but networked together the starfighter’s computers could collate and synthesize the data – resolving even small or concealed signatures with a powerful enough pulse to identify them.
It took longer than Avalon’s computers would, but Avalon was light minutes behind them now. Michael waited patiently as the networked squadrons ground through the data.
Then his breath caught in his throat as the computers emotionlessly drew in the smooth oval shape of a Commonwealth battlecruiser.
Chapter 18
Hessian System
13:05 September 5, 2735 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
SFG-001 Actual – Falcon-C type Command Starfighter
Kyle looked at the shape of the warship with trepidation. He’d thought he’d been chasing twenty mostly obsolete fighters with almost forty super-modern ones. He hadn’t even replenished his ship’s munitions, and his implant computer happily pulled up the data to tell him most of the Falcons had a single four-missile salvo left. Some, like Williams’ Alpha Six or his own command ship with its reduced magazines, were completely empty.
The ship in the asteroid cluster was even bigger than the Resolute he liked to use in exercises. Eleven hundred meters long and sixteen million tons, the warbook was happily informing him it was almost certainly a Hercules-class battlecruiser.
That made their lurker one of the Commonwealth’s newest and most powerful warships, but at least gave Kyle and his people one distinct advantage: the Hercules-class were unabashedly optimized as shipkillers. Their heavy armament, in missile batteries and heavy positron lances, was only somewhat reduced from the last generation of battleships, and their fighter complement and anti-fighter armament was weaker than most carriers or even regular cruisers.
“They know we’re here,” Stanford reported.
Kyle saw what his senior commander meant immediately. The massive radar pulse had been unmistakable, and the battlecruiser’s captain clearly knew what it meant. Zero point cells flared to life throughout the massive hull, and the radiation and boson detectors started to go nuts as the ship’s engines followed.
Space Carrier Avalon Page 16
