by Bob Blanton
“So, after that, how many are there?”
“Eight,” Liz said. “That’s besides you and Jason.”
“So four spares,” Catie said.
“So far. I want them to sit in that thing with a lid on it before I approve them,” Liz said. “We don’t want to find out someone is claustrophobic after we seal them in.”
“Probably a good idea,” Catie said, “but I suggest we let them watch some kind of video on their HUD while they do it. It’s really tough when nothing is happening.”
“I’ll pass that on; now you’d better get some rest, we’re expecting the Paraxeans back any day now.”
“Are they on our sensors?”
“Not now. They won’t show up unless they power those gravity drives or their Foxes are out maneuvering around.”
Chapter 30
Coup de Grâce
It was fifty-two hours before the Paraxeans returned. This time they sent Foxes out well in front of the fleet to sweep the area for any mines or silent-running missiles. They had eight hundred Foxes arrayed around the fleet, and they were accelerating at 0.1G.
“Okay, what does this tell us?” Admiral Michaels asked.
“They must have found a real military professional in one of those stasis pods,” Catie said.
“I agree, they’re still ten hours out, and they’ve got picket fighters out well in front of them sweeping the area,” Blake said. “They’re keeping their carriers well back from the battleship and their fighter wings.”
“But they’re still very two dimensional,” Catie said.
“What do you mean by that?” Admiral Michaels asked.
“Their pickets are in a thirty-degree range above and below their line of advance. It’s like they think we have to approach them along the ecliptic,” Catie said.
“You would have to go a long way out of your way to attack them from a more extreme angle,” Liz said.
“No, I agree with Catie,” Captain Clark said. “They’re coming in like I would arrange a wing of bombers and fighters. I fall into that trap on almost every simulation I run.”
“Well, so far, we’ve adhered to that,” Admiral Michaels said. “During the previous engagements, all of our forces have been arrayed within that angle. Why didn’t you say something before?”
“I thought you were doing it on purpose,” Catie said. “Judging what they would do, how far they would probe without giving them something to remind them that we could come at them from any angle.”
“I wish that were true,” Admiral Michaels said. “I might have done it that way if I had thought about it, but quite frankly, I was caught in the same two-dimensional trap.”
“Okay, so how do we get Odin’s Fists against the battleship?” Blake asked.
“We attack their carriers again,” Captain Clark said.
“You want to circle above and down?” Admiral Michaels said.
“Yes, with a max acceleration, we can put our fighters on a vector above their sensor sweeps. Let them coast until they’re high enough, then they kick their engines on long enough to send them back behind the Paraxean carriers, then they come in from behind, vectoring down at forty-five degrees.”
“And the Fists?” Admiral Michaels asked.
“Let’s assume they realign the battlefield between the attack from behind and us. So we bring the Fists up from below, forty-five degrees from the old battle plane and ninety degrees from the new one,” Captain Clark said. “And I can see from Catie’s smile that she agrees with me.”
“What kind of forces do we send?” Admiral Michaels said.
“Eight squadrons for the carriers. Two squadrons with the Fists,” Captain Clark said. “When we start attacking the carriers, we send another sixteen squadrons right at them.”
“Isn’t that a bit two-dimensional?” Blake asked.
“We want them to be comfortable in that two-dimensional thinking,” Captain Clark said. “That gives the squadrons with the Fists the maximum time to run silent.”
“What about mines and missiles running silent?” Captain Clements asked.
“Let’s keep those out of it,” Admiral Michaels said. “Make them keep wondering where they are.”
“I like it,” Blake said. “All except the part where my niece is sealed in that Fist for eight hours.”
“I’m sure none of us likes that part,” Admiral Michaels said. “I’ll have a few cases of scotch waiting; we’ll all want some no matter how this goes.”
◆ ◆ ◆
It took two hours to seal the pilots in the Fists, then they were mounted into their Hyraxes, and the Odin Squadrons launched and headed below the ecliptic. The eight squadrons of Hyraxes that were targeting the carriers had left two hours ago, vectoring above the ecliptic. The Paraxeans were still eight hours away.
Catie was watching the outtakes of the Jetsons, and the outtakes of Rocky & Bullwinkle that ADI had made for her to keep her distracted while she let ADI fly her Hyrax. All the Fist pilots were watching one form of video or another. They had thanked Catie profusely for her advice about watching a video during their test. All had been busy using the simulator to train on the Fist after that. None of them wanted to run any simulation while they were actually sealed inside it.
“Remind me again who the crazy was that thought this idea up?” Jason asked.
“I think it was that McCormack girl,” Lieutenant Kay Owens said.
“Yeah, I think so too; everyone I’ve talked to says she’s a complete loon,” Lieutenant Mariam Beaulieu said.
“Come on guys, quit complaining; it’s only been four hours,” Catie said.
“That’s why we’re complaining,” Jason said. “We’ve got another four hours of this, and for some reason, I cannot go to sleep.”
“Probably because you’re worried you won’t wake up if you sleep in that coffin you’re in,” Lieutenant Owens said.
“You got that right,” Lieutenant Beaulieu said. “You won’t catch me sleeping in this thing. In Canada, we take people like that McCormack girl and leave them out on the tundra for the fairies to get.”
“Anybody want to play chess?” Catie asked.
“I just told you I wouldn’t be caught dead sleeping in this thing, and you want me to play chess?”
◆ ◆ ◆
The Hyraxes targeting the carriers were within twenty thousand kilometers and still had not been detected. They fired off eight rounds from their railguns, using their lasers to heat the slugs so that they would spread out and cause maximum damage when they sliced through the carriers’ hulls. Their delta-V with the carriers was one hundred fifty kilometers per second, giving the slugs an additional seventy kilometer per second delta-V. The Hyraxes continued to coast, hoping that the slugs would not be detected before they started hitting the carriers.
The Delphinean carriers launched another sixteen squadrons, which quickly formed up into two wings and accelerated toward the Paraxean battleship and the Paraxean Foxes arrayed in front of it.
Seven minutes later, the first slugs hit the carriers; then the Hyraxes lit up their engines and accelerated toward the carriers, launching another hail of slugs from their railguns, before they launched their first salvo of missiles.
The Paraxean Foxes that were guarding the carriers immediately redeployed and prepared to intercept the missiles. The carriers started to maneuver at right angles to the incoming slugs, hoping to get out of the way of any further salvos. The Delphinean Hyraxes had anticipated this action and targeted the areas they expected the carriers to move into for their second salvo. The carriers launched another six hundred Foxes, hoping to get as many fighters into space as they could before they were disabled. The Hyraxes changed their attack vector so that they were angling away from the carriers and their Foxes; the Paraxean missiles wouldn’t be able to intercept them for another ten minutes, but soon their velocity would put them beyond even the missiles’ range.
Having seen the effectiveness of the Paraxean shrapnel miss
iles, the Delphinean team had modified enough missiles to that configuration so that each Hyrax carried four of them. They launched two salvos of one shrapnel missile and one counterstrike missile each as they prepared to meet the oncoming Paraxean missiles.
Their first salvo cut the number of missiles heading their way from two thousand down to eight hundred; the next salvo cut that number down to two hundred.
“Okay, boys and girls, time to earn that flight pay,” Kasper said. “Let’s keep their attention. Launch the rest of those missiles--no use bringing them back to the carriers.”
The first salvo of Paraxean missiles flew into the Hyraxes; the pilots were able to knock down or avoid most of them. Any missile that didn’t manage a strike was out of the game due to the Hyraxes’ velocity. They lost five Hyraxes to the first salvo and none to the second. By then, they were out of range and accelerating back above the ecliptic to come back around.
The Paraxean Foxes had only lost forty Foxes from the Delphinean missiles that made it through the missile scrum, but now they were facing two thousand of the hardened Delphinean missiles. They launched everything they had at the incoming missiles. Only four hundred Delphinean missiles made it through the scrum, but the Paraxeans had little left with which to defend themselves. The Delphinean missiles were guided by weapons officers on the Foxes that were well above the fray and managed to score 50% against the Paraxeans, confirming Catie’s suspicion that many of them were piloted by robots.
The Paraxeans’ lead wing launched two salvos of missiles, twelve hundred missiles in each salvo. The Hyraxes continued to accelerate toward the Paraxeans, waiting until they were within ten thousand kilometers before launching their first two salvos of missiles. Seven hundred sixty-eight Delphinean missiles entered the scrum against the twelve hundred Paraxean missiles. In this engagement, the Paraxeans had spotters out to help guide the missiles, but they were being beset by Hyraxes that were coming in from far above the ecliptic. Three hundred Paraxean missiles made it through the scrum, while four hundred twenty Delphinean missiles made it through to the other side. The Hyraxes launched two more salvos of missiles sending seven hundred sixty-eight missiles at the Paraxeans; after this, they would be too close to launch any more. The Paraxeans launched two more salvos also, but this time they fired two thousand in each salvo.
The fighters continued to accelerate toward each other; with their high velocities, they would only have seconds of engagement before they were beyond the enemy fighters. The Delphinean carriers launched eight more squadrons to handle any Paraxean Foxes that got through. The first two salvos of Paraxean missiles were decimated by the third salvo of Delphinean missiles. Five hundred Delphinean missiles exited the scrum, bearing down on the Paraxeans’ last two salvos.
The leading three hundred missiles from the Hyraxes met the Paraxean Foxes. The spotters did their job, scoring 40% against the Paraxeans. Almost one hundred sixty Foxes were disabled or destroyed, leaving a little over three-hundred sixty Paraxean Foxes facing the next two salvos and the Delphinean Hyraxes.
“Why haven’t they launched any more Foxes?” Liz asked.
“I’m not sure their carriers can launch more right now,” Blake said as he pointed to the display and the data showing the damage to the Paraxean carriers.
“I hope you’re right,” Liz said. “We’ve evened out the numbers so far.”
The next wave of missiles intersected, the previous numbers held, and with help from the weapons officers, four hundred Delphinean missiles made it through the scrum while only two hundred Paraxean missiles made it through.
It was too late for the Paraxean Foxes to turn back; they changed their vector to angle above the ecliptic and minimize the engagement time, but they would not be able to bypass the Hyraxes. The Delphinean wing matched the Paraxeans’ new vector and went to 3Gs for two minutes to maximize the time of engagement.
The two wings slammed into each other. The Hyraxes were far more agile than the Paraxean Foxes, and it showed. They took out Fox after Fox as they passed by each other; when the two sides were past each other and beyond range of their weapons, there were four hundred Hyraxes still flying and only twenty Paraxean Foxes.
One of the squadrons of Hyraxes that had just been launched accelerated to intercept the Paraxean Foxes. They had to accelerate at 3Gs for two minutes to guarantee an intercept. When it was obvious that they would be caught before they could reach their lines, twelve of the Paraxean Foxes ejected their cockpit pods. The twenty Foxes continued to race toward their lines; when the Hyraxes caught up with them, they easily took them out with their missiles.
The four hundred Hyraxes maintained their vector to the battleship and its fighter screen of three hundred Foxes. The Paraxean Foxes hunkered down inside the battleship’s cannon range and waited. The Hyraxes fired off a salvo of missiles and two rounds from their railguns; then they adjusted their vectors to allow them to pass under or above the battleship.
When the missiles got close to the battleship, its lasers reached out and started destroying them. The battleship easily dispatched all the missiles, the range of its lasers being far greater than that of the Foxes. The Delphinean slugs tore holes into the battleship’s hull and even took out a few Paraxean Foxes as the hailstorm reached them. The Hyraxes launched two more salvos of missiles at the Paraxeans’ battleship before vectoring off as hard as they could. It was at this time that the Odin squadrons struck. They engaged their engines right as they launched eight rounds from their railguns. Then they launched two salvos of missiles at the battleship before vectoring off. Sixteen of the Hyraxes held course toward the battleship, all of them being flown by ADI, but only four of them held Odin’s Fist. The battleship easily dispatched the missiles and started to roll in order to minimize the number of hits from the slugs that could impact one spot. The Hyraxes started firing their plasma cannons so that they would maximize the capacitor storage available when the plasma cannons from the battleship struck.
“Yee-Haw!” Jason yelled as his Hyrax took the first hit. It survived for 1.2 seconds, then the Hyrax exploded and the Fist was ejected into space. Catie’s Hyrax was the next to go, taking its hit from the battleship’s rear plasma cannon.
“I’ve got a lock!” Jason reported.
“So do I,” Catie replied.
“I’m going to miss that thing,” Mariam said. “I’ll try to maneuver back to it.”
“No, do not show any ability to maneuver,” Catie ordered.
“I bounced,” Kay reported. “Let me know when I can maneuver, I’m only thirty meters out.”
“Go ahead and try to get close enough. Mariam, how far out are you?”
“One hundred meters.”
“Then just play dead,” Catie ordered. “You don’t want them to target you, and we don’t want them to have any chance to learn about the Fists.”
“I’ve got a lock,” Kay said.
“Okay, maneuver as close to the plasma cannon as you can, then kick it,” Catie said. Her Fist was just outside the firing arc of the big plasma cannon. “They’re targeting me with their defensive cannons, I’m letting my capacitors charge up to eighty percent before I engage my cannon.”
“Copy, I’ll do the same,” Jason said. “I’m one minute from reaching the big cannon on my side.”
“Good, remember to target the area ten meters from the cannon, we want to take out the reactor if we can instead of just knocking out the cannon.”
“Copy, I’m in range of my cannon now,” Kay said.
“I’m firing my cannon now,” Catie said. “Capacitors holding steady at eighty percent.”
“They’re now targeting me with the main cannon,” Jason announced.
“Then dig into them,” Catie said. “I’ve got a main cannon on me also; I’m starting to penetrate the hull.”
“I’ve got a Fox targeting me with its cannon,” Kay reported.
“We’re coming to help,” Lieutenant Kruger, one of the Hyrax pilots, announced. “I’
m thirty seconds out, firing missiles now!”
“How are you doing, Kay?” Catie asked.
“Hull temperature is up two degrees, but my cannon is digging faster, I’m almost through the hull.”
“They’ve starting firing at me,” Mariam said.
“Do you need help?” Lieutenant Kruger asked.
“I’m good; they’re just charging my lasers; that will let me start fighting back. I can sit here and help cover the others until they’re done.”
“Good girl,” Catie said. “My plasma cannon is digging fast. The battleship is still blanking me with the plasma cannon.”
“Same here,” Kay announced. “I’m barely managing to keep my capacitors below ninety percent. I may need to start firing a laser to keep them from overcharging.”
“A laser won’t disrupt your plasma cannon,” Catie said, “go ahead and use it.”
“I’m through!” Jason said. “Now panning my cannon to maximize inside damage.”
“I’m through as well!” Catie said. “And I’ve got two Foxes on me with their cannons.”
“Two missiles coming your way!” Lieutenant Kruger called out.
“I’ve got yours, Kay,” Mariam said.
“Thanks, he just blew,” Kay announced. “And I’m through, panning my cannon.”
“Mine went down; I’m moving to the last of the battleship’s cannons,” Jason announced.
“There goes mine,” Catie said, “coming your way.”
◆ ◆ ◆
“Captain, Commodore Warlmag is on the Centag quantum,” ADI announced.
“Put him through,” Marc said. “Commodore Warlmag, what can I do for you?”
“We want to offer our surrender,” Commodore Warlmag said. “Please have those battle spheres of yours stop. We only have one more reactor, and if they destroy it, we will lose power, and the stasis pods aboard this vessel will fail.”
“You don’t need the antimatter reactors to power your ship.”
