One Last Battle

by Timothy Ellis

  One Last Battle

  By Timothy Ellis

  Copyright © 2018, 2019, by Timothy Ellis

  First Published in The Expanding Universe Anthology volume 4, October 2018.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and events are fictional and have no relationship to any real person, place or event. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely co-incidental.

  The author is Australian and the main characters in this book are of Australian origin. In Australia, we colour things slightly differently, so you may notice some of the spelling is different. Please don't be alarmed.

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without the written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contents

  Contents

  Author's Note

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Acknowledgements

  A Message to my Readers

  Also by Timothy Ellis

  The Hunter Legacy Timeline

  Author's Note

  This story occurs 100 years before the beginning of Hero at Large.

  It is also two days before the 2515 story in The Long Road to Gaia.

  One

  I was only on the launch deck for one reason.

  The shuttle was taking me to an evac hospital, for invaliding home. I was in the seat, duffel stowed, pondering the end of my flying career. They said I’d never fly again. They said if I ever tried, I'd kill myself doing it. And most likely others as well.

  I didn’t get it. I could do everything except run and fight. They didn’t want me. It was easier to train a new pilot. Fleet wanted command officers out of fleet officer school, not battered ex-fighter jocks.

  "Now hear this! All pilots to your fighters. Launch by squadrons. This is not a drill."

  I didn’t need to see, to know what was happening. I’d lived it so many times, I was out of my seat and halfway to the hatch, before I realized it didn’t include me. The non-com on the door looked at me as if I was crazy. But I didn’t stop.

  Down the steps, and fast hobbling, took me to the nearest status board. Every fighter pilot who could run, was already firing out the launch tubes, or being loaded in. The scanner repeat showed why.

  The enemy had caught us this time, and exactly where I'd have expected them to. And they outgunned us. Two smaller carriers to our larger one. Fleet wise, about the same mixture, but it was the fighters which always concerned me. Fighters won battles. Fleets delivered them, and if you were down to just the fleet, you’d already lost. A fighter pilot viewpoint to be sure, and one which capital ship weenies objected to, and maybe I was biased. I'd never been in a full fleet action before, and no-one else in the American sector had either. It'd been fifty years since capital ships had fought a Jutland like action, and Jutland still held the record for the number of big hulls involved.

  Fighters did the grunt work these days. The brass had sent a fighter recon ahead, and so had the Germans. With a whole solar system to play in, you'd have thought we'd not have been in such a bad position as this, but there you go. The pilot's role was launching, not making strategy.

  I watched as the last of the fighters on board launched.

  I watched as they started winking out on the display. One in particular caught my eye, and tightened my chest. Mine.

  Something was wrong. This wasn’t going as well as it should have.

  "Sir? What are you doing here, sir?"

  My old squadron's crew chief had recognised me standing there.

  "Any birds left?" I heard myself ask.

  "Yours was reassigned."

  "I know. It's already gone. What's left?"

  "Not much. Half dozen birds too damaged to fly. And..."

  "And?"

  "There's the CAG's personal bird sir. But don't even think about it."

  I thought about it. The display was showing enemy fighters now as well, and ours were winking out faster than theirs were. The CAG was a penguin. He rarely ever flew anymore. And his ship? Was the best.

  "Get me in the launch tube Chief."

  He looked at me for a second, before leading the way, running on ahead, calling over the deck crew. By the time I caught up, they had the bird in the tube, and stairs waiting for me. Someone threw a flight smock at me, and stood there with the helmet. I slipped into it, and limped up the stairs, still tugging on the zip. Long step, half jump in, and I was sitting. Canopy closed, belted in. Helmet on as the tube door closed behind me.

  Thumbs up to the deck officer, salute, and brace.

  The catapult fired, and I launched.

  Two

  The bird launches mechanically.

  Engines on, but no thrust, accelerated out of the tube by a catapult, attached to the undercarriage. Nine gees when released, and for the first several seconds, the building gees have to be borne by the pilot until the compensator kicks in.

  For a normal healthy pilot, this is the price of flying fighters. A kick back into the seat like being punched in the chest, vision blurs for a moment, and the internal gravity nullifies the gees. By the time you're in space, you've forgotten it happened.

  The gees crushed me, threatening to make me pass out. As they eased, I felt wetness dribbling down inside my clothes. I guessed synthskin pulled, and wounds reopened. There was more pain, and right now, nothing I could do about it.

  My mind wandered for a moment, reliving the crash landing which had ended my career. Waking in the hospital unable to move.

  "I'm sorry Captain Jedburgh, your flying days are over. We had to remove your left lung and kidney, but managed to save your spleen and liver. You lost some intestines as well, and your left leg is held together with plasteel pins. The worst is over, but we'll be sending you home to recover fully, before discharging you."

  Given a choice, I prefer the kick in the guts from launching.

  Seconds had passed, and the bird exits the tube. Engines switch to thrust automatically, shields come on, and there is no longer any need for gravity in the bird. I adjust heading, and change the controls from penguin mode to serious fighter mode.

  The CAG is a good leader, but he's always been crap in the cockpit. Score one for peacetime, and no decent wars for over fifty years, to elevate an average pilot to CAGdom. Give him his due though, his strategy is top notch. Something I couldn’t say about the admiral in charge of Yorktown, or we wouldn’t be in this shit now.

  Modern scanners see well into the distance, so the fighter battle was a long way from each fleet. Throttle hard against the stops was still going to take me too long to get there.

  The wet was pooling in my crotch, and across my hips. Ignore.

  Career over through the mistake of a rookie, and just as a real shooting war begins. Just my luck. Stop thinking about it.

  The German fleet had been advancing up the spine for weeks now. The Joint Chiefs knew they were coming, and thought they knew what was coming. But all we had here in the Cuba system to meet them was Yorktown's recon fleet, since everything else was off chasing pirates.

  We didn’t have the firepower to deny them entry to the system, so the admiral had planned a cat and mouse game to try and get them to turn back. The object was to hold them outside the American sector, long enough for a decent fleet to come together behind us. Technically we were in breach of Earth sector's refusal to allow our fleet into their space, but their military wasn’t here, and we were.

  I’d watched the opening moves f
rom my hospital bed. Rumours had run up and down the ship about the CAG and Captain arguing with the Admiral behind not quite sound proof doors. Admirals can't be denied though, so here we were.

  And now here I was, battered and broken, flying into the biggest battle the American Sector had seen in a long time.

  Details were coming up on the HUD now, showing less detail than should have been there.

  The enemy fighters were not in the war-book.

  Fine, so now I understood our casualties. The Germans had new fighters, and managed to hide them long enough to get them here without our intelligence service finding out.

  I checked who of ours was still fighting. The rookies were all gone, including the one who'd done me in by mistake. Of the rest, most of them had a lot of combat time against pirates. But none of the squadron leaders had made it this far, so there was no real cohesion left.

  Just one big furball, and that was just fine with me.

  Three

  "Redline, is that you?"

  "Who else would it be Thumper?"

  Thumper was a flight leader like me, and probably the senior still left. In case you’re wondering, Thumper did. A lot. Surprising in such a short woman, but by hell you stayed out of her fist range when she was angry. Which was a lot of the time. It made her a seriously aggressive pilot, and held her back when promotions were handed out.

  "In the CAG's bird? No-one I guess. Fuck!" One of our birds disintegrated. "Turn off your ECM, they don’t work anymore, and seem to attract missiles instead."

  "You're shitting me!"

  "I shit you not. Why do you think all the rookies bought it so quickly?"

  I reached over to the switch, and the ECM died. Instead, I added missiles into the target list.

  "Where do you want me Thumper?"

  She told me exactly where I could go.

  Before I could do anything, the CAG told me differently. I ignored him, which was just as well, because Yorktown's Captain cut him off in mid-sentence. I was out here now, they needed every pilot they had, and if I wanted to kill myself, at least it was defending the ship. They'd be getting new birds after this anyway, and the CAG always got the newest. But I knew if I made it back, the CAG would tear me a new one.

  If I made it back. I took my hand off the speed slider, and clamped it where some of the synthskin was supposed to be, hoping a few seconds pressure would stop the dribble of blood. I was at full speed now, so I had the seconds before I needed that hand again.

  I should have told Thumper to pick a new tactic. This one got all the rookies killed on the simulator, and was drilled into them never to do. But then, I figured I was already dead, so what the hell.

  There were enough of our birds left to keep tails clean, and Thumper had reformed them back into cohesive pairs working together. But they were being severely hassled, and not returning the favour well enough to stop about a squadron worth of enemy birds peeling off and heading for me.

  Doctrine said when the enemy is coming towards you, angle off so they don’t get the perfect no deflection shot at you. Rookies were taught when a squadron of the enemy was coming head to head at you personally, turn and run home.

  I did neither. What I did do was remove the safety on the speed slider, and pushed the lever to the stops.

  They didn't call me Redline for no reason. I had a long history of returning with no battle damage, but needing the engines replaced. The only reason they left the pin in, was for emergencies when the last erg of speed might save your life. What's an erg? Who cares? I’d saved my skin more than a few times by being the fastest when it counted. But the engine tech weenies hated me. It was odd, knowing I’d never have another argument with them.

  Eye on the ball! The wet trickle had resumed.

  I had two advantages. The enemy were coming on at a normal cruising speed, and unless someone checked, they'd be assuming I was coming at them at this bird's top speed, which was well known to them, and less than what I was coming at. And as I cycled through them, I could see they were out of missiles, while I was fully loaded.

  The bird had four hard-points, two under each wing. Each one held three image recognition missiles. For once I was glad the CAG was a lousy shot, and relied on missiles which tracked a single target until either they hit, or ran out of fuel. I preferred fire and forget missiles, since they were totally unpredictable, and I liked causing chaos among enemy ships. Since they packed a bigger wallop, pilots couldn’t ignore them.

  But now wasn’t the time for chaos. I needed surgical precision, and at longer range, the IR's were perfect.

  I confirmed the lead fighter was the enemy CAG, and locked him up. A few seconds later, a dozen lock on warnings had me turning the alarm volume down. Had they had missiles, I’d have needed to do something about now. But they didn’t, so I didn’t.

  A few more seconds, and I used them to tag second, third, and fourth targets, being the senior Squadron Leaders. I figured they wanted first crack at Yorktown, while their minions kept our remaining birds corralled out here. One last bird launching late, obviously wasn’t going to be a serious problem, even without missiles.

  The CAG was the obvious target, front and center, with the formation swept back from him. The Germans loved their precision. I expected him to survive. The others were not even close, and therefore not on a precise head to head approach, and not expected to be the targets of a single fighter coming at the CAG. Well, so I hoped.

  The target reticule flashed yellow, and then red.

  I double tapped the missile trigger.

  Four

  One missile from either side launched directly at the CAG.

  Change target, tap, tap, change, tap, tap, change, tap, and tap. Shift to guns, and change back to the CAG.

  Now here's the thing about playing chicken. The first one to flinch and pull away, usually gets raked. If neither of you flinch, there is usually a collision. At slow speeds, shields would bounce each other away. At our speed, there'd be nothing left to bounce anywhere. The saving grace was scoring enough hits first, so your shields would keep you bounced away, while tearing the remains of your enemy apart.

  There's another problem with this, if you do manage to survive. Even a partial collision would weaken your shields too much, and leave you vulnerable to other enemy fighters. In other words, you announced yourself as dead meat, ready for carving.

  All of this flashed through my mind as I waited for either missiles starting to hit, or the enemy fighters dodging. At the intercept speed we had going, there wasn’t going to be any time for thinking.

  The CAG didn’t flinch. In fact, he did nothing at all. He took the first missile dead on the cockpit canopy, and the second into a wing root. The ship disintegrated. My mouth fell open.

  I pulled gently back on the stick to go over the top of the exploding mass, and pressed the button to change to nearest target. The CAG's wingman was still coming on, and as the second and third sets of missiles hit, I altered slightly to retarget, and pulled the guns trigger.

  Pulses came at me, but not many because of the problem of being too spread out across my line of flight, and turning to fire at me, would be turning into friendly fire. Those who did get a shot off at me, underestimated my speed, and the pulses fell behind me.

  My pulses chewed through the wingman, and again I went slightly high to go over the top of him. The fourth set of missiles also hit, a bit belatedly, and I was five kills to zero in the first pass. Some debris damage to shields, but not enough to worry me.

  I had a few seconds to fire at someone else further down the line, and then I was past.

  My left hand was holding firm against where my kidney had been, again, and so I didn’t slow down. Three hands at this point, would have helped. The engines were redlining, but not yet overheating. My next move depended on their next move, and while they made the decision, I was running. Towards the rest of their force to be sure, but also towards the remainder of ours.

  They had a choice, and n
o senior officer to make it. They had an enemy behind them now, who still had missiles. While they'd whittled our force down to its core, we still had enough fighters to damage their carriers. And my four remaining missiles, if fired inside the flight deck at the right place, could destroy a Carrier. It was a suicide stunt, but they'd just seen me take the suicide option, and live.

  I heard Thumper bellowing orders, and could see the enemy formations were no more, partly from her tactics, and partly because their pilots were having a hard time coming to grips with losing their seniors in the space of seconds, after having made short work of our formations to start with.

  There was some cheering coming through in the background, and I assumed it was from Yorktown. The CAG's voice silenced them. The Captain's voice silenced him, and spoke to me.

  "There's no need to kill yourself Redline. But keep up the good work."

  I didn’t bother answering. A simple 'Yes Sir' was expected, but it was too much like accepting an order to not kill myself, for my liking.

  I had no illusions. I'd killed myself when I launched. Now was simply borrowed time.

  Thumper was still trying to disengage from the rest of the enemy fighters, but so far hadn’t been able to. The fighters now behind me made their decision, and turned to follow me. I allowed myself a grin.

  Their CAG had screwed up. Had it been me, I’d have had the flights far enough apart so all of them could have turned to fire at me, and still have seconds to avoid colliding with their own. But one is always thankful for arrogant pilots who think they don’t need any help taking out a solitary bird.

  Now they'd had to choose between going up against a fleet carrier without missiles, or let missiles take a shot at their escort carrier. Lose, lose, but in my humble redlined opinion, they chose wrong. Yorktown could take whatever the remaining seven fighters could dish out using only guns, but there is always the chance of getting lucky. Besides, they had more of their squadron mates ahead of me, with more chance of taking me out, and absolutely no chance of catching me before they did.