She had intended this as a brush back. Threaten the aliens and push them back from the jump. Instead, like Drake against the Armada, she’d set fireships loose in the anchorage and was creating all sorts of confusion. Her enemy was in disarray.
It was time to take advantage of that.
39
“Send to all ships. Change of plans. We will attack,” Sandy snapped.
“All ships, set Condition Zed over the next sixty seconds. Steadfast, you will accelerate at 3.5 gees and lead Dreadnought through the jump. Commodore Taussig, Victory will lead BatRon 17 though the jump. Admiral Shoalter, you will lead BatRon 7 and 5 though the jump behind us. Fleet will begin to accelerate to three gees in sixty seconds.”
Around Sandy, the Victory beat to quarters. “Battle stations, battle stations. This is no drill. Move your asses boys and girls! They’re getting away!” The last wasn’t quite standard Navy, but Sandy would let the Victory’s skipper decided if the young yeoman got a pass for that quip.
“Get me a high gee station,” Sandy ordered her computer as she kicked of her shoes and stripped out of her ship suit. Before she was bare, a Smart MetalTM high acceleration station flowed up from the deck to stand beside her, properly configured for an admiral’s battle station. Sandy ditched her bra and panties and slid into the station. She still had thirty seconds to spare.
From her station, she studied the battle board.
The Stalwart and Dreadnought were already accelerating at two gees toward the jump.
On the second half of the board, the Battle of the Alien Anchorage was in its final seconds. Alien engineers slammed all the reaction matter they could into their ship’s reactors where it was converted to plasma. That plasma cloud grew as the containment field hopefully also grew. Super-heated to the temperature of the sun, it shot out to the rocket motors on the ship’s stern, creating electricity as it went . . . which was immediately directed to the containment fields to keep the stampeding plasma demons under control.
Only the leftover juice was shunted to the lasers’ capacitors. Fleeing ships now took thirty or forty seconds to reload. Defensive fire slacked off even as the missiles rocketed toward the alien cruisers, at close to 25 kilometers per second, locked onto targets. Once the choice was irrevocably made, each missile began its final, mad approach.
The battle around the central dish became brutal. Ships that hadn’t moved quickly enough when their Enlightened One began his bug out, found themselves the first targets for the incoming missiles. Now it was clear that not only were they under attack by the remaining six missiles that had initially targeted them, but another eleven were adding themselves to the wave.
One of the last to join the flight, found itself the first targeted, not by one but two missiles. They came at it from both sides. Their fire control was unable to handle two targets simultaneously. It selected one, fired its four aft lasers – and missed.
One missile riddled the ship with shards of Smart MetalTM. They ripped into the hull. Somewhere, one did major damage in the engineering spaces. The ship vanished in a lengthening cloud of gas as plasma moved from stern to bow, eating the ship.
The second missile veered away, heading for a second ship. That ship suddenly found itself also desperate to take down two targets. It targeted the first missile, not spotting the new danger soon enough. They successfully shot the first missile out of space. The new attacker, however, slipped in and exploded close aboard. Suddenly the ship’s acceleration bled off to zero. It was executing a zig at that moment. It continued to zig. The bow seemed to not be going quite as fast as the stern. The ship bent around itself, then exploded and vanished.
A third missile, this one with an atomic warhead, got hit on final approach. The crystal armor lasted just long enough for the bomb to detonate. At first, it looked like all the alien ships was far enough away to escape, but the heat flash baked the side of one ship. Then the expanding cloud of gas washed over it. When it emerged, it was traveling on a steady course. That lasted for a long moment, then the ship exploded. Its destruction appeared to start somewhere forward, maybe a laser capacitor blew up, then the ship was rocked by a larger explosion before the engineering spaces exploded, engulfing the entire ship.
The Enlightened One was now screaming non-stop on the alien net. Sandy would later assign Mimzy to do her best to translate what he was shouting. For now, the terror in his voice was music to her heart.
The other dishes were now under attack. Most of them were saved from the atomic armed missiles, two or three per each dish, that switched target to the central dish. Still, all of them had thirteen or fourteen streaking at them. Many missiles were caught in the laser beams and evaporated, but the alien fire control wasn’t good enough to get all of them.
Ships in each array died when hit by the fragmentation darts from the exploding missiles. One dish lost two. Two lost three. The last one had really bad gunnery. Five died in the lower battle formation.
As those dishes on the periphery paused to catch their collective breath, the scourging of the central array continued.
Eleven atomic tipped missiles now closed on the final defenders of the Enlightened One. Because of, or despite his screams, they continued to fight, as much for their lives as his. It was hard to tell if the missile they aimed at was aimed at them or the rapidly fleeing Enlightened One.
By now, all the surviving ships had pushed their acceleration well past three gees. Some were edging toward 3.5 gees, right up there with the fearless leader.
One ship blew itself to bits as a red-lined reactor took its vengeance.
Another died as an atomic blast turned it to a cloud of superheated gas.
A third winged an onrushing missile, but it held together long enough to close the ship and exact its revenge.
A fourth ship fired itself dry as a missile shot toward it. All ten lasers passed within a hair’s breadth of their target. None hit. The missile almost smashed into the ship before it exploded. The cruiser simply vanished.
Suddenly, the missile attack was over. The Enlightened One’s own battle formation was down from twenty-seven ships to twenty. Nineteen, if you didn’t count their fearless leader.
Still, they would lose no more. There were no more missiles coming at them.
The alien net fell silent.
Sandy listened with one ear open for the Enlightened One’s orders, while her eyes watched her own deployment.
She immediately had to drop one order.
“Steadfast and Dreadnought, belay your last order. You are not to jump into the next system for,” Sandy glanced at the calculations her flag navigator was holding up for her from his hi gee station, “for two and a half hours. You will follow the last of BatRon 5 though the jump. I can’t have you arrive there in forty-five minutes when the rest of the fleet can’t come up to support you for another hour and a half. Besides, I don’t want to give them a hint of the hell that is about to land on them.”
The two battlecruisers’s skippers acknowledged the change in their orders. They didn’t sound all that happy, but they obeyed and their battlecruisers began to decelerate.
Among the aliens, several side nets were active, although what the chatter was, Sandy could not even guess. Mimzy said they were using a scramble.
“I can crack it,” the computer said, “but it would likely take a couple of hours.”
“By that time, it won’t matter,” Sandy said.
The report from the periscope still showed a fleet in disorder, some still withdrawing, some now decelerating, all now doing whatever they did at a comfortable single gee.
The Enlightened One didn’t come back on net for over an hour. When he did, he sounded just as authoritarian and pompous as ever. He issued orders, then bellowed when ships were slow to reply. One ship detached from the dish that had only lost two ships and joined the central dish. Apparently, more ships were ordered to join the Enlightened One’s flotilla, but didn’t move to obey quickly enough for him.
He got quite demanding. His voice became shriller.
Then everything changed in a blink.
The cruiser that had reinforced the center disk, spun around, aimed its forward battery at the ship that had bugged out before the rest and blew it out of space.
40
Sandy was reclining in her high gee egg, under the pressure of three gees acceleration when that development blew up in their face. She would have loved to see the reaction on a few faces.
“I guess that’s one way to handle a change of command,” Van drawled.
“Sure saves on the retirement package,” Mondi quipped.
“Pity the poor dumb bastards that crewed that Enlightened One’s flagship,” Penny observed.
“I agree with all of you,” Sandy said. “Now, how does this impact my developing battle?”
“I think we wait and see,” Van said.
Sandy suspected a lot of her staff would have shrugged at that, but, at three gees, it risked a sprained back.
For the next hour, they watched as the alien force talked through the transfer of command. There was a whole lot of talking, and while they talked, some ships continued to fall back. Mimzy thought there was an argument inserted in the command debate about pulling the fleet back. Some seemed to want one measurement. Others wanted twice that.
“I’d guess that we’re talking about 50,000 kilometers verses 100,000. I don’t really have a frame of reference. My suspicion is based on some reference to what I think is the range of their lasers. We think that’s about 100,000 kilometers.”
“Thank you, Mimzy,” Sandy said. “Your guess is likely better than any one of us here.”
“You are welcome,” the computer said, sounding quite proud.
Since when did computers start preening when a human thanked them?
An hour and a half later, the Victory finished her acceleration toward the jump and flipped to decelerate at a bit less than 3.4 gees. It would lead the rest of the fleet through Alpha Jump Point at as close to 50,000 klicks per hour as possible.
On the other side of the jump, the aliens were still debating. A few had returned to the 10,000 klick line. More had flipped ship and were decelerating at one gee, headed for a distance of 50,000 klicks. A few were still leisurely accelerating away from the jump, some at as little as half a gee, enjoying the pleasure of weight and likely taking showers and attending to other necessities.
There seemed to be three contenders for the throne, so to speak. Mimzy had no guess as to the content of those discussions. Few participated in them, maybe ten ships out of the surviving 115 cruisers. While it went on, each skipper seemed to be a lord unto himself.
Sandy liked matters that way, and hoped they wouldn’t change too much for the remaining hour of her approach run in.
Meanwhile, she had the second half of a battle to plan. She discussed the situation with Admiral Shoalter, Commodore Taussig and the two other squadron commanders.
“I intend to flip ship and go through the jump bow first at as close to 50,000 klicks as we can. It doesn’t look like they have much structure, so I can’t give you much of a fire plan. No captain can do very wrong who picks a target and lays eight or twelve lasers on it. I don’t think any of these ships can take a full battery salvo from fore or aft.”
She paused. It was hard to read people who were reclining in an egg and under nearly three and a half times their weight. Even facial expressions were drawn.
“We have formed up at 1500 meters interval. It’s damn close for maneuvering, but it puts us through the jump at two second intervals. To reduce the prospects of collisions, I will set an acceleration of only one gee on the other side. BatRon 17 will also steer upwards at the two o’clock position. BatRon 7, you take the six. BatRon 5, you have the ten o’clock angle. Immediately target the ships still holding to the ten thousand kilometer line. Once they’re gone, aim for those around the fifty thousand klick distance, then those farthest out. There is no doubt that we will be in range of their lasers from the moment we jump into that system. But then, even the 20-inch guns of BatRon 5 will have plenty of targets.” That drew a chuckle despite these weighty circumstances.
“Evasion Plan 3 is our initial jink scheme. You may take it higher if things get too lively for you. Any questions?”
“Just a plea,” the commodore for BatRon 5 said, his Spanish accent strong under the weight. “You lead squadrons, please leave some targets for us. Remember, we’ll be over thirty seconds behind you.”
That drew a labored laugh, and the central command net closed down to give Admiral Shoalter time to give his own brief to the squadron commanders and them time to brief the skippers of their battlecruisers.
An hour later, the USS Victory carried Grand Admiral Sandy Santiago into the first battle of choice in her long career.
41
The wolf was loose among the sheep. That was the only way to describe it.
The argument among the alien contenders was getting bitter, from the sound of it. In the meantime, the ships redeployed themselves any way their captain thought best.
Twenty-two cruisers lurked fifteen to twenty thousand kilometers from the jump. Of the remaining ninety-three ships, forty-seven were formed into five groups fifty thousand klicks back and the balance were slowly forming themselves into another five groups at a hundred thousand kilometer line.
Sandy had no intention of giving them any time to straighten themselves out.
The skipper of the Victory had been easily persuaded to allow Mimzy to access his ship’s network and command structure. After all, being alone for even two seconds with every alien laser aimed in your direction was a daunting prospect.
So it was that, as the Victory shot through the jump, the helm put itself over twenty degrees and began accelerating at one gee on a course sixty degrees to the right of the jump.
The periscope had given Mimzy a good layout of the alien deployment. It took only half a second for the fire control sensors to reach out for the closest targets and lock on to them. Aided by Mimzy’s lightning speed, it then processed the data and sent minor targeting adjustments to each of the twelve lasers in the Victory’s forward battery. That took another half second.
Bringing the lasers to bear on a target was mechanical, and therefore the slowest part of the process. That took one to three seconds, depending on how much the target had moved since the last report from the periscope. Once on target, the laser spoke.
A team of humans, Sandy, the Victory’s captain, Penny, and a few others, had decided what would happen next. It had taken them over a half hour to reach their conclusion and refine it. Now, Mimzy executed it in fractions of a second.
Against a door knocker, the lasers could pour five seconds or more of concentrated laser fire at one spot on the ship’s thick hull. Two, three or even four lasers might be concentrated on that single spot. Cruisers, however, were thin skinned. Meant for fast movement, they had just enough metal in them to keep them from collapsing at 3.5 gee acceleration. Mimzy modified the Victory’s fire controls to take advantage of just that situation.
The bow guns of the Victory shot out a very carefully measured staccato of coherent light. Half a second of laser fire, then pause for a second, then half a second more, then pause again. Repeat as often as necessary.
Mimzy took twelve of the twenty-two cruisers under fire simultaneously. Each got a half second laser bolt, then a second for the fire control sensors to observe the target and Mimzy to decide to correct as necessary. Most often, it took two of those cycles. In a few cases it was three before the lasers were tearing the target to bits. Then the computer ordered each laser to “fire for effect.”
Three or four more short blasts and there was no need to fire anymore.
What happened next was a complex decision the humans had made beforehand.
Like all battlecruisers, the Victory had a forward and aft battery. She could not fire a broadside. Her lasers could not fire more than fifteen degrees off her bow
, right or left, up or down. Twelve targets were blown to atoms or scrap in only ten to twelve seconds. In that time, the rest of BatRon 17 had followed the Victory through the jump. Their fire control systems were now looking for targets, but at a much slower pace than any guided by one of Nelly’s kids.
They had orders to target the cruisers in the next line, 50,000 kilometers out. The Victory would take care of those still hugging the jump.
For that, the Victory had to adjust her course. Her bow swung around to bring her lasers to bear on the remaining ten targets. To avoid taking friendly fire, the helm took the battlecruiser high. While the ship adjusted course, Mimzy was on the hunt.
In ten seconds, ten more alien cruisers were smashed, slit open to vacuum and left blown to bits, or, if their reactors went gently into that night, a drifting, rolling hulk.
By this point, Admiral Shoulter on the Phantom had led half of BatRon 7 through the jump. Commodore Phil Taussig’s Hornet, Courageous and Furious had acquired targets, taken them under fire and was disposing of them.
A normal battlecruiser’s fire control system could develop a firing solution for one target and concentrate all of the lasers of the forward and aft batteries on it as they came to bear. Mimzy did not suffer from that limitation.
Again, Mimzy chose twelve targets for the Victory. Again, her gun laying was exact. Again, ten to twelve seconds later, twelve ships died.
Mimzy went through the forty-seven cruisers scattered around the 50,000 kilometer line in little more than half a minute. They hardly had a chance to get off a shot or a ragged salvo. Most missed. Those that hit only served to light up the battlecruiser, not fry it.
The other battlecruisers were finding targets and Mimzy left the rest of the middle line to them as she set her sights on the remaining forty-six that were trying to organize themselves in the far distance.
Kris Longknife's Relief: Grand Admiral Santiago on Alwa Station Page 21
