Firestar
Copyright© 2009 by Prince von Vlox
Chapter 18
A cat patrolling just inside the hyperjump limit of the Home System spotted the first arrival. His message flashed inward, alerting other cats and the humans who worked with them that an unknown ship was inbound from hyperjump. The cat had no concept of numbers, and as other ships arrived it reported each one of them separately. If the cat could have lashed his tail he would have. He recognized these ships as an enemy, but he wasn’t supposed to leave his station to hunt them.
The rating on the watchship glanced at the first report without putting down her cup of brew. An unknown inbound. It was probably some Navy ship making an unscheduled return. She had just logged it when the next report arrived, the same cat, from the same general location. As more reports flooded in, she dropped her cup, feverishly transferring data to the message drones nestled in the belly of her ship.
“What do we have?” the Captain asked as she skidded to a stop on the Bridge.
“Multiple arrivals from hyper,” the rating reported. “I’m logging them as fast as the cat sends them, and I’m routing another pair of cats to confirm them.” She glanced at the scan beside her. “We’re getting indications on the scan, too, but they’re so closely bunched that we can’t track the details.”
“Do you have any idea of numbers?” The Captain got busy with her own controls, preparing a back-up drone and making sure their stealth systems were functioning.
“I have 72, that is seven-two, emergences from jump,” the rating said in a tight voice. “They have no known ID. Preliminary analysis of their engines is consistent with Idenux cruisers.”
The Captain went still in shock. Seventy-two Idenux cruisers was the largest fleet they had ever put together. So much for the Idenux only having 30 warships. She turned and looked at the screen showing the primary of the system. That was Home, and there hadn’t been a raid on Home in 15 years.
“Get the drone away,” she said. She hit the battle stations button. Beneath her, a specially modified missile flashed in-system at over 3,500 Gs, its grav drive stuttering out its message for every gravity detector in the system.
“Darya--recommendations?” the Captain asked the ship’s brain as the crew raced to their battle stations.
“Only one, Jeannie. Unmask the ship.”
“Unmask? But they’ll spot us.”
“They may send someone after us. Every ship they send after us is one less headed in-system.”
“It’ll help if you micro-jump us.”
“Of course. It’s my life, too.”
The Captain took a deep breath, rotated her ship 90º to the projected Idenux course, and piled on all the acceleration she could with her gravity drive. Their maximum acceleration, 215 Gs, wasn’t likely to get them out of trouble, but Darya was right, it should draw someone after them.
The Idenux accelerated inward, ignoring the watchship. The Captain swore silently to herself. She hated being ignored. Then she remembered something she had heard in a tactics presentation a year before on Home.
“Triffa, how long would it take to attach some missiles to a drone?”
“About 15 minutes, Captain,” Triffa said from her station.
“Make it 10, and the next time we make port, you’ll have enough whiskey you’ll be hung over for a month.”
“Aye, Captain.” Triffa waved a salute in the Captain’s general direction and dove for the hatch, already thinking through just how to do it. “You heard the Captain, girls,” she said as she entered the weapons bay. “Do it in 8 minutes, and you’ll have my share as well as your own.”
Seven minutes later, two drones, burdened with three missiles each, accelerated inward at 750 Gs. The Captain clawed her ship around and raced back to her station at her best acceleration. She had over 200 cats spread in a wide net through this whole volume of space. Other animals might be freely sacrificed in the Families’ service, but the cats were different. She just couldn’t abandon them.
“Did we lose any?” the Captain asked. She had one eye on the scan and the other on the ship readiness display. Six of their 24 missiles were speeding inward, and she wished she could follow them.
“They’re all reporting, all except Kitty Hawk.”
“He was the first one to spot them, wasn’t he? Where is he? Did they get him?”
The rating ran through her reports. When she finally understood, she looked up in surprise. “He’s taken off after them, Ma’am. You know what a hunter he is.”
“And we got him because some clerk thought he was too old to hunt with a line squadron.” The Captain shook her head. “Someone has a lot to learn about cats. You’d think they’d know better by now.”
“I was glad we had him, Ma’am. The other cats did their jobs better after he arrived.”
“That may be.” She glanced at the net of cats around the ship. “Who do we have that we can shift into his place?”
“Moppet, that’s N-17. She’s on the inner shell. We can move her into Kitty Hawk’s position. Then we can move Ash and Speedy over to...” The talk quickly got down to technical details and movement vectors. The cats covered a large volume of space, and they could only stay in their pods for a few days. They were arranged in multiple layers with just this thought in mind.
An alarm chirped as their six missiles went into acquisition mode. Four flashed, their warheads lashing at Idenux ships with their bomb-pumped lasers. And then came a larger flash, the boiling of energy characteristic of an antimatter explosion. One down, the Captain thought as she watched those explosions, one down and 71 to go.
Kitty Hawk watched the ship explode with some interest. The missile had come as a surprise, one he approved of. He always liked the pounce from behind, and coming up like that had been good. The prey had never looked behind them. The Captain was a frustrated hunter, and she had done the only thing she could to get at her prey. And then the drones right behind them, homing in on the ships, covered by the missiles. That had been a nice touch, especially the explosion they had caused.
One ship was gone and two were hurting. He wanted to turn on the damaged ships; they were the most vulnerable because they were wounded. But years of experience hunting this particular prey told him to wait. Right now he was attached to the flank of a large ship, and he was in an excellent position to ambush it when the time was right. The successful hunter returned home with his kill, and right now his temporary home was a long way away and getting farther. That didn’t matter. Home, the Fleet, was ahead of him. He would bide his time, make his kill, and then he would go home, his real home.
In the Operations Center of Fleet Headquarters, Admiral Fredericks studied the tracks on her display. “What’s the ETA for the inbound raid?” she asked, her quiet voice hiding her concern.
“We’re projecting just over 4.5 hours until they reach the Ring,” the staff officer said. “That’s 272 minutes if they keep the current deceleration.”
“What do we have on hand?” Admiral Fredericks asked. “I’ve been dirtside on leave for the last 10 days and I’m not current on our deployment. I know we’ve been moving ships around. What do I have to defend Home?”
The staff officer ran her finger down her list. “Phormio is in the outer system and can be back here in 5.5 hours. de Ruyter and Pharsalus are in Home’s leading Trojan position and are available now. All three carriers have their full complement of escorts and cruisers. Cruiser Squadrons 12 and 14 are inbound with an ETA at the ring of 118 minutes. Thunderbolt, Foxbat, and Battle are just coming out of Repair and Refit and are available starting in 4 hours. And don’t forget the 70 mechanicals in and around the Ring.”
“Edith Matsuoko has de Ruyter, right?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Wonderful,” Admiral Fredericks said. “Are there any competent commanders around? They can’t have left us with complete duds.”
“Shelley Burnham has Pharsalus, and Edita Macquarrie has Phormio. Adana Korina has Cruiser 12 and 14; she ranks everyone but you.”
“Good. Start Phormio inbound right away and tell Edita to boost as hard as she can. With luck, she’ll get here in time to make a difference. Tell her to judge where to make her rendezvous by what she sees going on. She might consider detaching her cruiser escorts. Who has them?”
“Josie Davenport. I thought you knew.”
“They put Josie in the same battle group as Edita?” Admiral Fredericks shook her head. “Whose bright idea was that? That’s like putting matter and antimatter together.”
“I understand Edita requested it. I’ve seen the reports, and they’ve worked out pretty well.”
Admiral Richards nodded. “I’ll take your word for it. I’d detach Josie right now, but I’ll let Edita make that call.”
She looked at the list of ships again, pondering her options. “In the meantime, detach two cruisers from Pharsalus and four from de Ruyter and give them to Adana. She’ll get the most use out of them. Edith will complain and dither about which ones to give us, so pick four that aren’t commanded by her relatives and recall those. Tell Adana and Edita to use their best judgment, and if I’m busy, Edita’s to follow Adana’s orders. She’ll be my second.”
“Captain Matsuoko won’t take orders from a cruiser commander, even Adana.”
“And nobody will take orders from Edith, except on her own bridge, but that’s a problem for later. Tell those ships coming out of Refit to stay in the Ring. They’ll backstop anything that gets past the rest of us. This is going to be tight.” Admiral Fredericks shook her head. “We’re not going to stop them with ships. Are the forts coming on line?”
“Six so far, eight more will be ready in 20 minutes, and two more in 40. Six more are going to stay stealthy until we need them.”
“That’s 22. What of the other two?”
“Down for maintenance and repair, but we can have one of them in four hours. We also have the mines and the automated defenses.”
“I’ve never trusted automated defenses,” Admiral Fredericks muttered. “Give me a good gunner any day; at least she can learn as the fight goes on.” She studied the plot again as it was updated. “Who could guess they would put that many ships together for a raid?”
“Aye, Ma’am, but 70 cruisers are a lot to digest. And six of them are those larger ships we’ve been hearing rumors about, the ones Intelligence is calling battlecruisers.”
“It could be worse.”
“Ma’am? How so?”
“There could be one more. After this is over, we’ve got to find who that watchship commander is. She potted one of them, and I’m not sure how. She’s being wasted as a watchship commander. She should have a cruiser, not some old tub that’s only good for patrolling.”
The staff officer flashed a quick smile. “I’ll start the paperwork on that.”
“Assuming there’s anyone left to do the paperwork.” Admiral Fredericks studied the plot again. Messages were already going out, some by laser, others by broadcast, still others by the new gravitic modulation system they’d introduced with the Jellicoe class of ships. She could already see a position change for Phormio. She should see the others start to move in a few minutes.
Captain Matsuoko objected to losing four cruisers. But her cruiser captains lost no time in breaking formation and racing away. Captain Burnham hesitated at losing two, but it was only long enough to choose which two she was going to send.
Pharsalus was already scrambling to get distance between herself and the incoming raid. Not coincidentally, she was also distancing herself from de Ruyter. Shelley Burnham didn’t want to tie down any of her fighters trying to defend that particular ship. Edith Matsuoko, as she had stated in public several times, could look after herself.
Captain Adana Korina altered her inbound course slightly, angling to intercept the Idenux raiders. The Raid Leader outnumbered Captain Korina enough that he could discount her cruisers, but he couldn’t ignore them completely. If he let Captain Korina slide in behind him, she could fire missiles through the gravitational disturbances from his drives. It wouldn’t block his return fire, but fire control systems were severely degraded when working through a local gravitational shear. The solution, of course, was to change course so the fire control systems could work at full efficiency. But that would take him away from his objective, which was Home itself.
After five minutes, a battlecruiser and six cruisers broke off from the main formation, moving off to one side so they could cover the weak points in the main formation’s fire control. Captain Korina sheered back in the other direction, using her acceleration to do the same thing on the other side of the Idenux formation. The Raid Leader could detach more ships, but if he did, Captain Korina would have effectively cut the Idenux strength at their target by 20% without firing a shot. True, those ships could rejoin the formation later on, but the initial strike would be that much weaker, and in a raid, you wanted all of your strength in your first strike.
Corey caught the last of these maneuvers when she reported to the Bridge. She had been on de Ruyter for five months, and she had yet to be assigned an action station, so she wasn’t sure where to go. In the past, she would have been in a Ready Room, preparing her fighter, cycling out onto the rail, collecting the tactical cross-feed from the Fighter Director, and readying her squadron. But where did the Staff go when the ship went into action? The Reserve Bridge? de Ruyter had one, but the only thing that compartment was used for was storing supplies. So what did that leave? Second Officer Markin should have said something to her, but hadn’t. She reported to her when she reached the Bridge.
“Oh, you,” Second Officer Markin said. “What are you doing here?”
“You never gave me a duty station,” Corey said.
“There’s no time for that now,” Second Officer Markin said. “Go find a place. Not here, you’ll just get in the way.”
“The Ready Rooms...”
“Not those, you’ll just get in the way there, too.” She shook her head. “Just go somewhere; can’t you see I’m busy?”
Corey watched the confusion on the Bridge. The Captain was pacing back and forth next to the scan, looking over the shoulders of the techs at their stations, and giving them a continuous stream of instructions. Second Officer Markin stood next to the scan, making notes on a clipboard. Staff officers were running back and forth. Half the hatches were open, not dogged shut, and none of the seats were locked into their shock frames.
This wasn’t at all like she thought a ship’s Bridge should look like during a battle. She started to shake her head, then stopped in case anyone saw her and misinterpreted it. She returned to the main corridor. Where else could she go? Nobody needed an inventory of uniforms or tools. None of the things Officer Markin had had her doing were particularly relevant to combat. She couldn’t just sit in her compartment, and she hadn’t trained with the Damage Control Teams, which was what a Supply Officer normally did. After a few seconds, she headed down ship to the Fighter Director’s compartment. At least there she could see what was going on, and maybe she could be of use.
One of the ratings looked up when she entered the compartment. “What’s the Captain’s pretty new toy doing here?” she asked the gal sitting next to her.
“I beg your pardon?” Corey asked.
The woman at the Fighter Director Console glanced up. “You’re Corey Andersen, aren’t you?” she asked. Corey nodded. “She’s the one they call Crazy Corey,” the woman told the ratings in the compartment. “I’m surprised you’re down here, Corey. Did Markin send you down to keep an eye on us?”
“Second Officer Markin told me to find some place out of her way, but she didn’t say where.” Corey spread her hands. “I decided this was as good a place as any, so here I am. What’s this all about? What’s going on? And how can I help?”
“Squadrons One, Two, and Three are on the rails,” another rating said. “Two minutes on Squadron Four, six minutes on Five.”
“Crazy was a Squadron Lead on Jellicoe, and before that, she was on Auldearn in the Frontier Fleet,” the Fighter Director said. “She won three Birthrights in a single year. Not only did she survive the experience, but her Second did, too.”
“So what are you doing down here?” one of the ratings asked. “Shouldn’t you be orbiting the Captain like everyone else with a decoration?”
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” Corey said. “I came down here because I certainly can’t do what Second Officer Markin has been having me do lately.”
“What was that?” asked the rating who’d spoken up.
Corey made a face. “I just finished inventorying all of our repair manuals. Before that, I inventoried all the spare stocks of tools in Engineering.”
“Draw up a chair, Corey,” the Fighter Director said. “You’re welcome in here. I’m not surprised Markin chased you away. A real officer makes the Captain nervous, especially because you rank everyone on the staff except Markin.”
“What was that about the Captain’s pretty toy?” Corey asked. She settled into the chair next to the Fighter Director’s console.
“Whenever we get an officer or rating who’s been decorated, the Captain brings her along to meetings and social events.” The Fighter Director smiled grimly. “The Captain seems to have a thing for reflected glory. She certainly doesn’t have any deeds of her own that have been rewarded.”
“You mean that’s why I’ve been dragged to every meeting and social event in the last four months?” Corey grimaced. “I hated that.”
“Not surprising.” The Fighter Director’s eyes glazed for a moment as she talked with one of the fighters through her shunt. “Sorry. Business. I’m Ellen Stuart. I’ve heard about you. Seen much of things from this end?”
“Just the normal rotation you get as a Squadron Lead,” Corey said as she studied the Fighter Director’s Console. There was a scan, a connector for a shunt collar, and a series of switches to various circuits within the ship. “I saw something similar during my Graduation Cruise on the escort Mustang.”
“I miss the days when I was out in the Glory,” Ellen said, “but this is almost as good.”
Corey glanced at the hatch. “We won’t be interrupted, will we? I’m not sure I should be here.”
“If Markin comes in here, she can run the fighter squadrons herself,” Ellen said. “We established that two years ago. She may think she has the Captain under her thumb, and most days she does, but I’m in charge in here and she knows it.” She glanced at the ratings in the compartment, who flashed her grins. “Welcome back to the real Fleet, Corey, not what Captain Matsuoko or Second Officer Markin think is the Fleet.”
Corey nodded. “What’s the situation? I know we went to Battle Stations, but nobody’s said why.”
Ellen pulled a shunt collar out of a drawer. “Here, put this on and I’ll brief you. It parallels mine, so I use it for training; that is, when I get someone to train.”
Corey plugged the collar in and slipped it around her neck. She squirmed slightly in the chair, trying to find a comfortable way to sit, and then reached forward and threw the switch on the panel in front of her.
It was a lot like when she’d been on the Mustang. Like there, she was aware of the compartment and the ratings, and she was aware of the Glory, but she had an anchor in the compartment, and she could focus, as she wanted, inside or outside the ship.
“You in?” Ellen asked.
“I’ve got it. How did you ... oh, I see.” She saw how she could select whom to talk to. It was just like selecting a weapon or comm frequency in her fighter. “This is different.”
“That it is, but it’s slick. The only things better than this are landers and fighters.”
“All right, I’m getting comfortable. Now what’s going on?”
Ellen showed her, and Corey gasped silently. “So many. What, 40? 50? No, more than that.”
“Plenty of targets for everyone.”
“We’re going to be busy.”
“All squadrons are on the rail,” a rating said.
“de Ruyter--Fleet. Ready for cross-feed?”
“de Ruyter--Aye.”
“That’s Fleet Command,” Ellen said. “Cross-feed is the scan from sensor platforms we have in the system. We’re showing 40 targets on the scan at the moment, though the watch ship reported 70. Someone at Fleet Command is working the discrepancy. They want to know where the other 30 ships are.”
Corey pulled her attention away from the display for a moment. Something was missing. She looked around. “Ellen, where’s the Ship’s Defense Controller?”
“Um? Oh, the Defense Controller? We don’t have one. It’s handled from the Bridge. Gina,” she waved at one of the ratings, “is trained on that console.”
“We don’t have one?” Corey was surprised. Someone had to control the defenses of the ship. “Why not?”
“Because the Captain couldn’t find a cousin of hers who was even remotely qualified,” Gina said. “With the exception of here, Drive, the Marines, and the squadrons, every department head on this ship is a relative of hers, a niece, cousin, sister, aunt, or some such. Several more of her relatives are on our escorting ships. Everyone on the staff, except for you and Markin, is from the Captain’s family.”
“She says it helps people work together,” another rating added in a dry tone.
“Though not quite the way it’s described in the Fleet Manual,” Gina added.
“How does she get away with that?” Corey asked. Alan had mentioned people using family connections in the PSK Navy, but she didn’t think the same thing happened in the Families’ fleet. That showed how much she knew.
“It’s rumored she has some sort of connection to the head of Staffing and Personnel,” Ellen said. “I’ve heard another rumor that her Eldest chairs the Budget Committee on the Family Council. I’m not sure how much I believe that.”
“We make her look good during the fitness reviews,” Gina said, scowling, “and what little combat we’ve seen, and she leaves us alone. Everybody’s happier that way.”
“If you call what we’ve done combat,” Ellen said. “de Ruyter hasn’t fired a shot at a live target in some time.” She looked at the scan in front of her. “I think the bill for that neglect is about to come due.”
“Cross-feed,” said a voice through their shunts. Corey sank her consciousness back into the situation. “Confirming 70 hostiles inbound. ETA to the Ring is 28 minutes. Prepare to launch fighters.”
“Back to work, ladies,” Ellen said. “I wonder how they know there are 70,” Ellen added to Corey. “The scan is still showing only 40.”
“All ships--Fleet. Scan is incorrect. Hostiles are piggybacking.”
“Oh ho,” Ellen murmured. “That explains it.” She selected another channel. “Squadrons, I’m cross-feeding you the scan. It shows 40, there are 70 out there. They’re riding piggyback. Spool them up, girls, we’re about to launch.”
“Fighter Director, this is Captain Matsuoko. Launch two squadrons, but keep one close in. They took away four of my cruisers and we’re sitting here naked. Remember, launch only eight fighters per squadron.”
“Fighter Director, aye.”
Corey clicked on to the back channel. “What was that all about?”
“The Captain wants to keep the rest back to protect the ship.”
Corey did some quick adding. “You mean, out of 90 fighters we’re contributing eight to defend Home?”
“Welcome to de Ruyter,” Ellen said. “This is where the defense of our families is less important than the personal safety of our Captain.
“First Squadron--Kara, you can take just eight. Go kill something for us. Two--Rita, take eight and fly close escort. Three, Four, and Five--Tina, Julie, Kelly, stay on the rail.”
“Is the Captain aware of just what is going on?” Tina asked.
“Those are the Captain’s orders, not mine,” Ellen replied. “Stay on the rail. I have logged the Captain’s order.”
“Third Squadron,” Tina said on the common channel. “Weapons are hot, but we’re to stay on the rail and imitate gun blisters.”
“What about the spares?” Corey asked, thinking about the six extra fighters in each squadron.
“They’re on five minutes’ notice for the rail,” Ellen said. “Don’t worry, the Captain hasn’t forgotten them, and neither have I.”
“The Captain never forgets anything that can protect her precious hide,” Gina added.
Cruiser Squadrons 12 and 14 rendezvoused with the six cruisers from the carriers. Captain Korina swung closer to the Idenux and salvoed a brace of missiles from each cruiser before pulling away. In the scan, Corey could see the ripples from the missiles’ gravity drives as they closed. Some were stopped, and some went after decoys, most closed and flared, spearing targets with their lasers.
Ten Idenux cruisers, including a battlecruiser, pulled towards Korina’s cruisers. The Idenux ships detached their fighters and darted ahead in a cloud. Captain Korina pushed two cruisers and a pair of escorts forward to deal with the fighters before accelerating in a long arc that brought her around for another firing run on the Idenux main body. Missiles slammed out from both sides. The Families’ cruisers began taking damage as Idenux missiles got past the cats and the point defenses.
The Idenux fleet came within range of the forts in the Ring. Bolts from the beam weapons left no trace of their passage, but Corey could see flashes as the Idenux cruisers took hits. More forts opened up as the range closed. The Idenux returned fire, but with little success. A beam that could carve through battle armor had trouble dealing with the protection Families’ scientists had devised for their forts.
For centuries, engineers and scientists had sought the energy shield, the defensive screen that could blunt or absorb an energy strike. But try as they might, nobody had managed to create a shield that could successfully deal with particle beams, mesons, x-ray frequency lasers, and all of the other forms of focused energy a ship could throw around. Gravity shear could deflect part of an energy strike, but that only worked along one axis; from other angles, it was useless. And surrounding an object with a gravity shear in all directions, while theoretically possible, had never worked in the real world.
The problem seemed insoluble until someone got the bright idea of using the one thing that was abundant in a Families’ system: gravel. The shields on the forts consisted of several hundred meters of ice, gravel, and scree constantly shifting around. Beams that hit it were diffused by millions of polished surfaces or absorbed by several thousand tons of rock and ice.
It wasn’t the best system, but it worked. It wasn’t portable, but it didn’t have to be. Forts that were raked by energy that would have blown a cruiser into radiant gas in a second shrugged off the strike as if nothing had happened. Some of the energy got through, to spend itself on battle armor, semi-detached shields, and a variety of gravity shears that re-directed millions of joules of energy. The crews manning the weapons behind the shields didn’t even notice; instead, they tracked, aimed, and fired without hindrance, pouring their hate back on their attackers.
The Idenux formation began to come apart, squadrons and individual ships spiraling away as their Ship Lords thought best. The Idenux Raid Leader was helpless to prevent it. The Idenux were an alliance of clans, not a tight military organization. He did keep the battlecruisers, 20 cruisers, and more than 100 fighters together. Even the most independent-minded Idenux Ship Lord had recognized that someone had to keep the Families fleet off the back of the raiders.
The tsunami of 70 attackers dissipated in 50 separate streams. Admiral Fredericks had been waiting for this. As Idenux ships peeled out of formation, she began issuing orders. In seconds, the Idenux Raid Leader found himself slugging it out with the forts in the Ring while the Families’ cruisers and fighters chased down the other raiders.
The Raid Commander knew this was a no-win situation. His ships began to take increasing amounts of damage with little to show for it. Reinforcements were on the way. In a few minutes, 16 more cruisers, including two brand-new battlecruisers, were going to jump in. The plan was for them to head in-system as fast as they could; hopefully, they would arrive off this damned ringed planet two hours after emerging from jump, swinging the fight decisively in his favor.
“We’ve identified two of the Bitches’ carriers,” his Scan Officer reported. “They’re trying to stay stealthy, but we’ve been tracking their fighters and have identified where that last batch came from.” He paused as the scan updated. “Only one of them is a large carrier. The other is one of the small ones. Intelligence said the large one is a training ship, not fit for combat.”
“Suggestions?”
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