“Damn,” Kyle said softly. The battlecruiser was more than twice Avalon’s size – and should not have been here.
“Lyla,” he continued calmly, addressing his engineer. “Record for transmission to that cruiser.”
A ping popped in his implant a moment later, letting him know she was ready.
“Commonwealth vessel,” the CAG said flatly. “You are in violation of the sovereign space of the Hessian system and are interfering with the pursuit of identified pirates responsible for the destruction of Hessian Orbital.
“As per the Section One of the Alliance Treaty of Mutual Defense, we will defend the territorial integrity of the Hessian system. Stand down and withdraw, or your presence will be taken as act of war.”
He swallowed, hard, then sent the transmission from his implant.
“All crews,” he said softly, activating the channel. “We are approaching a Commonwealth battlecruiser. She shouldn’t be here – and our pirates are running to her.”
“I have demanded that they stand down and withdraw,” he paused. “I do not expect them to comply. It looks like we’re about to fire the first shots of a new war.”
“Watch each other’s backs, maintain your random-walks, and stand by for further orders,” Wing Commander Kyle Roberts told his people. “Whatever happens, today will be a date that will live in infamy. Let it be said that we did our duty.”
The channel was silent. Thirty-eight starfighters tore through space, their speed ever-increasing as they closed on the pirates and the unexpected intruder.
“There’s your answer, boss,” Landon suddenly interjected on the fighter’s internal net. “They’re launching!”
The battlecruiser was moving. Engines and mass manipulators flickered to full power, and the massive Terran ship began to move towards SFG-001 at two hundred and thirty gravities.
And as she moved, she fired. Twenty missiles ripped free from the warship’s hull, followed moments later by ten starfighters.
Fifteen seconds later, a second starfighter squadron shot into space. Fifteen seconds after that, a third followed. Thirty starfighters shook out their formation, and then dove for SFG-001 at five hundred gravities.
In front of them, twenty missiles blazed the trail.
#
Prioritization came first.
The battlecruiser’s second salvo of missiles was launched two minutes after the first, as the first began to close the distance to Kyle’s crew.
Both waves of capital missiles were going to pass by SFG-001 before the Commonwealth fighters entered missile range of the Federation starfighters. If they kept up the ‘slow and steady’ rate of fire, a third wave would arrive as the two fighter wings exchanged fire.
Kyle’s implant database suggested that the Commonwealth’s heavy capital ship missiles were similar to the Federation’s. These would accelerate at a thousand gravities for three hours. Since Avalon was tens of millions of kilometers behind his ships, the missiles would have to go ballistic in the middle.
If they were half as smart as the Jackhammers the Federation used, that meant that any of them that made it past his fighters would only be visible to Avalon in their terminal attack mode. If SFG-001 didn’t stop the missiles, Avalon was in danger.
“Track those missiles, target them with your lances,” he ordered calmly. “Hold your Starfires until I give the order – be ready to use them on those starfighters.”
“What about the battlecruiser?” Lancet demanded. “We need our missiles for her!”
“The battlecruiser won’t matter if those starfighters kill us,” Kyle told her grimly. “They’ll expect us to think that – so I want a mass salvo, straight down their throats as they close.
“We’ll have to take the cruiser with lances,” he continued. “We’re way out of range for Avalon to provide fire support, but we’re also closing damn quickly. Rip her in half, but try and leave big enough pieces for Intel to pick over.
“I want to know why she’s here,” Kyle concluded grimly. “And at a quarter cee closing? It’s a risk we can afford.”
After four hours of accelerating at full power, his ships were rapidly creeping up on twenty-five percent of the speed of light, their theoretical maximum safe velocity. At that speed, it was only going to take them twenty minutes to close the range with the cruiser.
His squadron commanders passed on his orders, and the Federation starfighters spread out, opening up more vectors for lances and sensors on the missiles. His implant started to throw up timers in his head – time to the first missile salvo. Time to the second missile salvo. Time to missile range of the fighters, and time to the third salvo.
He tried to stretch to release tension, only to smash his fingers against the shielding in the cockpit and curse. Losing himself in his implants had helped distract him from the cocoon he was wrapped in, but he knew he was going to regret the time spent locked into it later.
“There goes their ECM,” Landon murmured over the net, and Kyle watched as the battlespace disintegrated into hash as the missiles came closer to his starfighters.
The CAG smiled grimly, adjusting his own course to sweep the nose of the fighter with its fifty-kiloton-a-second positron emitter across the region of space he knew contained the missiles. Pulses of pure antimatter blasted into space, and electronic-counter-counter-measures strove to resolve their targets.
The Falcon’s ECCM gear, the newest the Federation had, won the electronic duel. Not every missile appeared at once, but as each one appeared, it was blasted into oblivion by watching starfighters. Unlike starships or even starfighters, the weapons had no electromagnetic deflectors to reduce positron lance range – their only defense was not to be targeted at all.
The first salvo died well short of SFG-001, but the second set of twenty missiles was right on its heels, and the battlespace was filled with radiation from the first salvo.
The last missile of the second salvo died in the middle of Kyle’s formation, thankfully still hundreds of kilometers away from any of the Federation starfighters.
Kyle watched the distance to the Commonwealth starfighter wing carefully. Now they were closer, his warbook happily identified them for him – Scimitar class ships, the Commonwealth’s latest sixth generation ship. They were narrow cylinders, quite unlike the wedge shape of the Falcons, and carried multiple smaller positron lances against the Falcon’s single lance.
The Scimitar was the offset to the Hercules-class battlecruiser – unquestionably optimized to kill starfighters. Commonwealth doctrine only saw the starfighter as a defensive unit, used to hold off Alliance starfighters while capital ships made the kill.
Kyle grinned coldly as the timer ticked down.
It was time to show them the flaws in their doctrine.
“Full jamming, full ECM, full missile salvo – now!”
Hessian System
13:25 September 5, 2735 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
SFG-001 Alpha Six – Falcon-type Starfighter
All around Michelle’s starfighter, the other starfighters of SFG-001 launched their missiles. A handful of the fighters from Rokos’ Echo Squadron were as empty on missiles as she was, but the Federation starfighters still threw over a hundred Starfire missiles into space.
She ignored the missiles, knowing that Deveraux would take care of adding their ECM to the wave of jamming and chaos helping shield the missile strike. Her focus was on the heavy capital ship missiles fired by the Commonwealth battlecruiser.
The latest salvo of those missiles passed through their own fighters at the same time as they fired their own missiles. The battlecruiser’s missiles were closing far faster and were the immediate threat.
The Federation missiles were still thirty seconds away from impact, and the Commonwealth fighter missiles thirty seconds behind that, when Michelle drew a bead on the first capital ship missile and fired. She missed, the missile’s heavy ECM fooling her targeting sensors, but swept the positron beam across space to catch it
a second later.
Without the CAG’s ridiculous implant bandwidth compatibility, Michelle could only focus on so many things going on in space at once. With no missiles of her own in the offensive salvo, she focused on shooting down the capital ship missiles.
A second blew apart under her fire, then a third.
Then her entire sensor array blacked out in a burst of overwhelming static as her comrades’ missiles struck home. Over a hundred gigatons of antimatter explosions filled space with radiation and the natural jamming of matter-antimatter annihilation.
For a long moment, Michelle couldn’t see anything more than a few hundred meters from her starfighter, and she waited grimly for the chaos to clear. She hadn’t been the only one shooting down missiles, but she knew at least two were left.
The radiation wave slowly began to clear, and her scanners were pushing hard to pick out those last missiles – there.
She spun her fighter in space, acceleration leaking through to press her against the side of her chair as she turned the Falcon ninety degrees in a fraction of a second to track the missile about to pass through the Federation formation at thousands of kilometers a second.
The fighter aligned with where the missile would be for half a second, and Flight Lieutenant Michelle Williams sent a beam of pure antimatter out into space to intercept it.
Then, and only then, did her computer flip up the projected course of the command starfighter that the Falcon’s sensors had just resolved from the radiation.
She watched in horror as her beam ripped through the missile and detonated its one-gigaton payload of antimatter – less than eight hundred meters from Wing Commander Kyle Roberts’ starfighter.
Hessian System
13:28 September 5, 2735 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
SFG-001 Alpha Actual – Falcon-type Starfighter
“Yes!” Kyle’s exuberant shout echoed over the command channel linking him to Michael Stanford and the other squadron commanders. “That’s gutted them – now clean them up and let’s get ready to— ”
The command channel was silent for a long moment.
“CAG?” Lancet asked. “CAG, what are your orders?”
“I’m not seeing Zero-One-Actual on my scopes,” Zhao replied. “He was…”
“Right next to that last missile,” Rokos said grimly. Even as the Echo Squadron commander spoke aloud over the channel, a blinking text message appeared in the mental viewscreen of Michael’s implant.
You’re senior. Make the call.
He was senior. Randall had been senior before, had actually technically been the commander of SFG-001. With Roberts’ arrival and Randall’s arrest, Stanford had taken over the second in command role along with command of Alpha Squadron.
Running back through the scanners, he could see what Rokos had seen. A one in a million shot in several senses had taken out the last missile, a lucky shot that might easily have saved Avalon – but fluke had put the CAG’s starfighter right there.
The lethal radius of a one-gigaton antimatter warhead against a starfighter was estimated at just over one kilometer. Kyle Roberts was gone, which put one Flight Commander Michael Stanford in command.
If he could hack it.
Roberts’ strategy for taking out the battlecruiser was insane – relying on calculated shock and aggression over normal tactics. Stanford wasn’t sure he had the gumption to carry it all the way through.
On the other hand, he realized with a steadying breath, he also had inherited command of a starfighter group hurtling towards a battlecruiser at a quarter of the speed of light. Not following through on Kyle’s plan wasn’t an option.
“This is Stanford,” he said into the silence of the channel, surprised at how steady his voice is. “We can all read the numbers on that missile. I am declaring Commander Roberts MIA and assuming command of SFG-001.”
“Acknowledged,” Rokos replied immediately. Seconds passed, and Stanford was prayerfully grateful for the near-complete annihilation of the Commonwealth fighters.
The other Commanders slowly acknowledged, even as SFG-001 swept into positron lance range of the handful of remaining Scimitars. The pilots and gunners didn’t need further direction, and the outnumbered Commonwealth ships died in moments, their weaker lances failing to penetrate the Falcons’ deflectors.
“We need that battlecruiser in retrievable chunks,” Stanford told his newly inherited fighter group as calmly as he could with his heart pounding in his chest. “On my mark, begin full deceleration. Target all lances on the engines – let’s take enough of the bitch intact to know why they were here.”
He paused. “Let’s do Commander Roberts proud, people.”
Hessian System
13:30 September 5, 2735 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
SFG-001 Alpha Six – Falcon-type Starfighter
She’d killed the CAG.
The thought echoed in Michelle’s head to the point where she barely heard Stanford’s commands. She’d had her sensors trained on the point in space where the missile had detonated, and even now she was straining to detect the command ship.
Her computer gave her the likely impulse provided by the explosion. It also informed her that the starfighter was likely intact – and she thoroughly ignored the next datum that everyone aboard was already dead of radiation poisoning.
Without thinking, Michelle adjusted her course, ignoring the battle around her as she vectored towards the line her calculations showed the Falcon-C had to have followed.
“All fighters, decelerate on my mark!” Stanford’s voice echoed in her ears, and she ignored him as her mental fingers danced through calculations.
“What are we doing, sir?” Deveraux asked, able to follow the pilot in the system.
“We’re going after the CAG,” Williams whispered softly. “There’s a chance he’s alive.”
“He was too damned close! The rest of the group is decelerating – we can’t break off like this!”
Almost as Deveraux spoke, a direct channel opened up.
“Alpha Six, what the hell are you doing?” Stanford demanded.
“I’m going after the CAG, sir,” Michelle replied firmly. “We’ll hit the battlecruiser as we pass, but if someone doesn’t stay on his vector, we’ll never get them back.”
“We’ve got them dialed in, Lieutenant,” her squadron commander said gently. “We can pick up the bodies later, but we need every ship we can get for this strike! Get back in formation!”
“If any of them are alive, they need help now, not later,” Michelle said sadly. “I’m sorry sir, but I can’t obey that order.”
She cut the channel before Stanford could continue.
“Ready the lance, Deveraux,” she ordered, her voice far calmer than she’d expect for having just, technically, committed mutiny. “We’re going by first, and we’re going by fast – don’t try and hit the bastard, just fuck his sensors.”
“And what will you being doing?” her gunner asked, something in her voice suggesting that at least one other person understood.
“I’ll be finding the CAG. Now hang on!”
Hessian System
13:35 September 5, 2735 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
SFG-001 Alpha Actual – Falcon-type Starfighter
For all that Michael was giving serious thought to permanently grounding Lieutenant Williams when they all returned to Avalon, her decision not to decelerate with the rest of the starfighters gave them all a tiny, every-so-slight, advantage.
Her arcing course took her around the limits of the battlecruiser’s range roughly five seconds before the remainder of the Federation fighters headed straight into it. The brilliant pulses of her positron lance flickered through space.
At that range, over a hundred thousand kilometers, a Falcon’s fifty-kiloton-a-second lance couldn’t penetrate the powerful electromagnetic deflectors that scattered charged particles away from battlecruiser’s hull, protecting her from positron beams.
&n
bsp; She hadn’t tried. She’d launched a ‘dazzler’ attack – swinging the beam of her positron lance around the target in a spiral that scattered positrons throughout the field of the electromagnetic deflectors. For a few precious fractions of a second, the space around the Commonwealth warship was filled with radiation and charged antimatter, blinding her sensors.
Those fractions were enough for Starfighter Group Zero Zero One to cross half the distance from the hundred and twenty thousand kilometer effective range of the battlecruiser’s ninety-kiloton-a-second lances against their deflectors to their own sixty thousand kilometer range.
Their own jammers, and dazzler strikes from several squadrons, took them the rest of the way. Over sixty positron lances ripped out into space from the battlecruiser, each capable of ripping one of the tiny starfighters to shreds.
Two struck home before the Federation ship’s reached their range.
Then it was their turn.
Thirty-four beams tore through space. The battlecruiser’s deflectors still threw aside some. Others missed outright, computers fooled by the Commonwealth warship’s ECM.
Uncountable millions of charged positrons made it through, colliding with the Terran ship’s hull. Positrons met their regular matter counterparts and annihilated in bursts of pure energy and five hundred and eleven kilovolt radiation.
No armor, however mighty, could withstand its own component material exploding. The beams cut through the back half of the cruiser, ripping apart machinery, tearing open fuel lines and destroying power lines.
One of those beams of pure antimatter ripped open the containment on the ship’s main containment tank, and her own stock of antimatter added to the chaos.
It took just over three seconds for SFG-001 to pass into and out of the battlecruiser’s weapon range. Four starfighters didn’t survive the pass.
Space Carrier Avalon Page 17
