Firestar
Copyright© 2009 by Prince von Vlox
Chapter 26
FAMILIES STAR CATALOG, SYSTEM K-303
Corey kept looking at everything around her very closely. This was the last time she would experience it all directly, and she wanted to fix the sensations in her memory: the way the air felt on her skin, the way the light reflected off her shunt contacts, the distant sound in the air vents, the slightly acrid taste of the atmosphere in the Colbert’s tiny Ready Room, the thousand and one sensations of a ship.
She had spent the last hour packing and tagging her belongings so everything could be sent to Sonia and Heather after the battle. The only thing she hadn’t packed had been her flute. She had never gotten that good with it, and now she wouldn’t have a chance to. But she hadn’t had the heart to send it back to Red Ridges, either. In the end, she had left it on her bunk--she would let somebody else figure out what to do with it.
Corey ran through the checklist for her fighter one last time and scrawled her signature on the appropriate line. From that moment until she stepped out of it, the fighter was hers. She hid a wry smile. It was hers, all right. They could never take it away from her either, and because of that, they couldn’t even take Space away from her, not anymore. She thought of the five empty hulls for the Children. She would have to arrange to convert to one of those hulls afterwards. Svetya was right; she would love the freedom that would bring.
Before she sealed up and began the launch cycle, Corey opened contact with the Bridge. “Everything in place?”
“The Children are settling in nicely.”
“I’ll launch in a couple of minutes. Tell Amanda.”
“Aye, Ma’am. Good luck.”
Corey took a last look around at Colbert’s small Ready Room. She took one last deep breath, inhaling all of the smells, and then she leaned back and nestled her shunt against the contacts. The important thing was to relax. The cushioning fluid began welling up around her. Her thumb hesitated next to the Button, then she pressed it...
... and the world was narrowly compressed with just the square hatch at the far end, ending with Colbert’s rail. She cycled through the hatch and out onto the rail. The Glory settled down around her. She let it fill her, washing away all of her previous doubts and cares. It was hers now, and she belonged to it.
She ran her final checks before dropping the connection to Colbert. With a click, she left the rail and everything else behind her. Now there was just the mission, now there was just purpose. And afterwards, if there was an afterwards, there was The Button.
The Officer of the Watch on the Imperial Frigate Rendini saw the gravitational disturbance known as a hyperjump footprint appear on his scan. By the time he reached for the alarm, what had started as one footprint had spread across half his sector. The week before, the convoy from Beeler had appeared this way, but as the footprints kept multiplying, and as the first ships emerged, it was obvious this was no convoy, this was a major incursion by a fleet.
From the first emergences, the computer projected their course. As the Bridge crew reported for Action Stations, as the Rendini turned to flee, everyone knew this was hopeless. The oncoming tidal wave of ships was going to wash right over them as if they weren’t even there.
“I’m getting debris forming ahead of those ships,” the Spec/3 on the Main Scan reported. “You don’t think the stress of jump did that to them, do you, sir?”
“Unlikely,” the Captain said. “But it’s been known to happen.”
“That debris is maneuvering, sir,” the Spec/3 said. “What could it be?”
“Full power scan right on it,” the Captain ordered. “Everyone else, prepare to abandon ship.”
The Officer of the Watch shut all of that out of his mind and focused on the things he could do. He analyzed the ships as they appeared. Vectors, masses, drive signatures, everything his training told him was important went into the message drones that he launched. Rendini was doomed, he was a dead man, but he could make his death count for something.
Rendini was accelerating, trying to get far enough away, trying to build up enough velocity they could jump. Imperial Frigates were known to have the highest acceleration of any ship in this arm of the galaxy. The Captain, though, had never seen ships that accelerated like these. They were like no ship he had ever seen or experienced. No matter how Rendini accelerated, no matter how they moved, every man in the crew saw it was useless. Someone had built faster ships. They knew it had to happen eventually, it was just their misfortune that they were on station when it happened.
Rendini’s end was quick. Beams lashed at it from several directions, hammering through the hull remorselessly. Bulkheads shattered, spraying debris throughout the ship. Crew died, but not many, most were already in escape pods and lifeboats. The bridge, however, took several direct hits. Nobody made it out of the bridge.
When it was all over, when Rendini was a gutted wreck surrounded by a slowly expanding cloud of debris, the survivors of the crew converged on the beacon of the senior officer. The tidal wave of ships had passed them and was descending on the inner system.
“What were those things?” Lt. Commander Ivandrez asked. Unlike most of the officers, he had made it to a regular lifeboat. “Did anybody get a good read on them?”
“Too much fuzz, sir,” Spec/3 MacKender said. He was nursing a sore elbow; he had banged it into something as he had evacuated his station. “I couldn’t hold them on scope long enough to get much of anything other than that they were devilishly fast and well-armed.”
Lt. Commander Ivandrez looked at what was left of Rendini. “Well, it’s out of our hands now. We did what we could. Do we have all the capsules located?”
“Every one that I have a beacon for,” Spec/3 MacKender replied. “I would say better than half the crew made it, maybe as many as 2/3rds.”
“Maybe instead of ships we should man some of these rocks out here,” Ensign Vaganti said. Though he had a broken leg, he strapped himself down in front of the engine controls.
“Do you think a few hundred thousand tons of rock would have made much difference, Taggart?”
“It’s worth a try, sir. Rocks are a lot harder to kill than ships, even with nuclear weapons.”
“When we get back you can... “ The console beeped, and a ship showed on the screen. “Uh-oh. Company’s coming.” He tapped a string of commands into the console. “I think we just became prisoners, gentlemen. That’s a PSK destroyer signaling us.”
“Where did the PSK get the ships that could do this?” Ensign Vaganti asked. “I thought we were pressing them pretty hard.”
“We are. They’re on their last legs right now. Don’t worry, this is probably some wild last throw of some kind. What did you count headed in-system?”
“From the speed and mass, I peg it at eight battlecruisers and a lot of smaller ships, sir.”
“We have eight battleships sitting in-system, and four cruiser squadrons,” Lt. Commander Ivandrez said. “They’re old battleships, not up to front-line duty, but they’re more than adequate to beat off a raid like this. No,” he shook his head, “this is a last desperate throw. Those battlecruisers will last about as long as a candle in a windstorm. We’ll weather this and be home within a year, 18 months at the outside.”
Thirty minutes later, Senior Lieutenant Alexander Grifton, Captain of the PSK Destroyer Bludgeon, made one last personal check of the surrounding space. Three of those fighters from the Ladies’ Navy had already combed the wreckage. His own sensors had done the same, but he wanted one last check. He had spent two years commanding a watchship. Always present in the back of his mind was the thought that things like this could happen, and that he could be left alone light-hours from the nearest rescue, way beyond what his air and water could take him. They might be enemies, but they deserved better than to die in the cold emptiness on the edge of interstellar space.
“Are you sure that’s everyone?” he asked on the frequency he had been given.
“There’s nothing else within five light-seconds,” the contralto voice of the fighter ship’s pilot answered.
Senior Lieutenant Grifton sighed. “Very well. Dock and we’ll head in-system.” Several weeks before, Bludgeon had suffered a major engineering casualty, and they could barely make 50 Gs. Rather than send them back to a base for refit and repair, someone had had the brilliant idea of turning them into a search and rescue vessel. The three fighters he had been assigned had also had failures, some with their weapons, some with their drives. Ordinarily, they would sit out the battle inside their carrier, but instead, someone had assigned them to Bludgeon, both as escort and for search and rescue. It wasn’t the kind of glamorous job a destroyer captain wanted, but it was the kind they often got.
“Landing in two minutes.”
For some reason, he didn’t understand. These pilots insisted on calling it a landing, not a docking. Whatever it was, they had attached a series of hardpoints and a long rail coupled to a large electromagnetic generator to the side of Bludgeon, and he carried them around with him wherever he went. The other destroyer captains had kidded him about it, and even some of the Ladies’ Captains, though in a half-respectful way. One of the Ladies had taken to calling them the Very Light Carrier Bludgeon, and somehow that name had stuck. The crew had resented it at first, but in that curious way of combat crews everywhere, they had adopted the Ladies and now looked on them, and themselves, with some sort of pride.
“Action in-system, sir,” said the Tech on scan. “I’m tracking multiple high-speed gravity sources.”
“Very well. When we’ve recovered the Ladies, we’ll proceed in-system. Astrogation, plot a course towards the next locus of activity.” He watched the confusion of the fight on the scan. He had been in a few battles, and seen a few more. This one looked bigger, and messier, than ones he had seen before.
“I think we’re going to be busy today.”
Corey’s fighter was attached to the flank of Amanda. They’d removed some of her weaponry to give her an improved scan, but that did her little good right now. Each of the Children’s squadrons was housed in a light frame and covered by a shell of material that disguised them. Small artificial gravity warpers, the kind found in exercise machines, were attached all across the front of that shell; their collective effect was to confuse any active scan pointed in their direction.
Her own scan was blocked by the same shell and warpers that disguised them. Instead, she had to rely on information sent to her by the nearest regular warship, Nungesser.
“Next time we run some passive sensors out on the shell,” she fumed.
“If there has to be a next time,” Amanda said. “That’s the whole point of this, isn’t it?”
“Sonia didn’t say, no matter how much I questioned her. Nungesser, this is First Child. How are we doing, and can you give me an update?” she asked the cruiser.
“Easy, Corey. We’re still 30 light minutes from the outside of anyone’s powered missile envelope.”
“Fine. Where is the opposition? You didn’t tell me anything useful.”
The Coordination Officer on Nungesser checked something. “Sorry, Ma’am. I keep forgetting you can’t see very well just yet. We’re just passing the orbit of the inner gas giant. Opposition has been light and scattered, just a couple of ships. If we had no opposition, our vector would put us zero-zero 1,000 kilometers above the target planet.
“Intelligence had things pegged correctly. There are eight large vessels maneuvering to intercept us. By their engines, they’re Imperials. The PSK ships identify them as battleships. We’ve also identified 16 ships that both our Intelligence and the PSK Admiral are saying are heavy cruisers. They out-mass ours by about 20%, but have lower acceleration. They are accompanying the battleships. Just leaving the orbit of the inner planet are 32 smaller ships, also Imperial. They mass about the same as the PSK destroyers. Forming near the inner planetoid belt are 52 Idenux cruisers. They’re in no formation yet, but I expect that will change.”
“Admiral Crown and Admiral Bridges are changing our course to look like we’ll engage the Idenux first. At the moment, it looks like we will intercept them 12 minutes before we make contact with those battleships.”
“Feed me an update on the scan.” Corey studied the scan for a few minutes. “That’s smart. We’ll mass all of ours against part of theirs. Have we launched the fighters yet?”
“Just about to. All the fighters are on the rail.”
“Patch me through to Weizman, would you?” She felt the clicks as the link was opened. For some reason best known to Admiral Carter, Corey and the Children had been put under Admiral Kornikova’s command.
“First Child,” she reported. “Plan update?”
“Adana here, Corey. No change in the basic plan, just the numbers you’re after. We’re going to hold you back until after the fighters have launched.”
“Oh?”
“We’re launching all the fighters in... 320 seconds,” Admiral Kornikova said. “We’re maneuvering to delay the attack on the Idenux until then. We want them to see our launch and go into their tight formation. They’ll see our fighters head for the Imperials, and they’ll think we’ve ignored them. I’m counting on them deciding to go for the carriers, the standard response from the Idenux. When they do, we’re going to spring you directly at them.”
“I am estimating you’ll launch in 450 seconds. You’ll have a little over one minute before you engage. I know that’s cutting it fine, but I don’t want to give them time to react. I’m counting on the Children to take them. When you’ve cleaned them out or chased them off, act as you think best. You know the Children’s capabilities better than I do, and you know the basic plan.”
“Aye, Ma’am.”
“Good luck and good hunting.”
“Thank you, and same to you, Ma’am. First Child out.”
Corey switched frequency to the one that connected her by hard wire to the Children around her, and by whisker laser to the others. “Okay, girls, update to the plan. We’re launching after the fighters, not before. The target remains the same, we’re going to kill Idenux. We outnumber them 36 to 50 something, and it’ll be just us against them.” She called up her display on ship status. “Final system checks.”
As they made their last status checks, Nungesser updated her scan. She passed that along. “Amanda, Liz, Krissi, Nuri, start your count. On my mark, we unmask in 400 seconds and go hard on the reaction drives until we can go to full acceleration. We will have less than a minute from launch until we can engage the Idenux, so push your drives hard. We’ll take updates from Nungesser until then. Ready? Mark.”
“Counting,” all four of her Squadron Leads reported.
Corey fed the updated scan to the Children as it came across from Nungesser. She could feel the tension rising as the clock ticked down. The Idenux were already forming up; they had seen something like this before and they had an idea of what was coming. The Imperials did not. They were spread out too far for their point defenses to integrate.
“Fighters, all fighters, stand by,” Admiral Bridges said on the common frequency. “Launch in 15 seconds. Good luck and good hunting.” She paused a heartbeat. “Go get ‘em, girls; you know how I’m counting on you.”
“The Imperials have launched missiles at us,” the Coordinator on Nungesser reported. “The cats are moving to intercept.” She paused as the clock ran down. “And there they go! All fighters have launched. Carriers are sheering out.”
“Nuri? It’s Corey. Keep an eye on the carriers. The only ones who can catch them are the Idenux, and they know it.”
“Right, boss.”
On her scan, the trails from the fighters, over 1,000 of them, were suddenly stark. The Families Navy had never done anything this big before, and Corey felt a moment of pride as she saw them go. For a moment, just for a moment, she wished she was with them. But that moment passed; she had another task.
“All right,” she said to herself with satisfaction as the successive updates came in. The Idenux had tightened their formation as they saw the launch, but as the fighters raced off in a different direction, they began to alter their course towards the carriers, still keeping their tight formation. They knew about reserve fighters, too. They didn’t want to loosen their formation and be caught by surprise by more fighters.
Corey smiled to herself. Show them something you know they’ll take advantage of, and when they do, then change the situation to make their advantage a liability. She couldn’t remember how many times she had done that on the Tactics Table back at Command & Staff. Now she was seeing it happen in real life by a master of the art, Admiral Bridges.
The clock ran down to zero, and suddenly the shell surrounding each squadron blew apart, freeing the Children. Every one of them had been plotting intercept vectors based on the scan. As their own scans came alive, they made the final changes to their vectors and boosted hard on the disposable reaction thrusters that had been added for just this moment. When they had separated enough, they kicked on their own drives. They knew their mission: Kill Idenux!
Corey had little to do in the initial stages of the fight. They had rehearsed their part of the plan several times, so she had nothing to do but watch. As they passed five light-seconds, she detached from Amanda and lagged behind. At one light-second, the Children launched their external missiles, which multiplied in numbers as the individual warheads separated and sought their own targets.
Idenux point defenses were good, and their tight formation maximized what they had. Just as their point defenses engaged the inbound missiles, other warheads began to blow. Bomb-pumped masers, tuned to the frequencies of the Idenux active scan and fire-control systems, lashed out. Some of the Idenux ships lost their scan completely; on others, it was disabled for critical minutes. On every ship, their scans and fire-control systems reported hash when they could report anything at all. The Idenux could fire blind, but with no targeting, that was a complete waste of effort. Some did anyway, in the hopes of hitting something and putting nearby ships in danger with random shots. Most ships desperately recycled their systems. The final sprint of the Children to energy weapon range went unnoticed until it was too late.
The tight formation was wonderful against both fighters and missiles. It made the Idenux just densely packed targets when energy weapons were used. The Children carried missiles, but for this mission, for this target, energy weapons were the weapons of choice.
Corey had put all four squadrons together in one wave. She had gone through the records of the Children’s first engagement against the ships of the Raid and had planned this after a great deal of thought and experiment. After seeing the part the Children were going to play in the battle, she had done everything she could to put herself in the mind of her opponent. She already had a pilot’s idea of what a massed fighter strike was like. During the last few days of preparation, she set about learning what it looked like to be on the receiving end of an attack like that.
She had spent hundreds of hours with the Children, learning the all-important timing of how fast they could recover and turn. She had even gotten Alan to do one of his wonderful computer simulations, though she had told him it was for the fighter strike on the Imperials. She had poured over the records of every engagement she could lay her hands on. She wanted to know what the opposing commander was going to see and what he was likely to do. She wanted to leave nothing to chance. The Children could only catch the Idenux by surprise once, and she wanted to make the most of their fleeting opportunity.
In the first few seconds of the attack, she knew she had succeeded. Within seconds of the initial strike, several Idenux ships reeled out of formation, spewing air, escape capsules, and debris. Others moved to dodge the Children, opening holes in the formation like she had seen so long before. There wasn’t anything to do for the first three minutes of the engagement except watch as the Children cut a swath through the Idenux.
But the Idenux knew how to fight. They knew what to do in a desperate battle, even against opponents they had never seen before. After the first few minutes of chaos, they began to try to shake themselves into separate fighting groups. As they did so, Corey began to “work” the battle. Her intuition kept prodding her, and after fighting it for a bit, after trying to impose the tactics she had studied and practiced, she relaxed and let everything flow. In seconds, she could feel the shape the battle was taking, what was likely going to happen, and how she could twist it to her advantage.
“Nuri, pull back, mass with Amanda’s squadron. Liz, ignore the ones in front of you; they won’t be a threat for a couple of minutes. Go help out Amanda instead. I want the three of you to attack that large group just in-system of you.” She marked it on her display, knowing it was repeated on theirs.
The three squadrons converged on the largest group of Idenux, a group built around three battlecruisers. The Children came from three different directions. Someone tossed a brace of missiles ahead of them. Imploder warheads popped, twisting ships, pieces of ships, and anything around them with gravitational shears. And then it was a close-range slugfest, with the Children’s ability to coordinate their fire and movement as no human crew could have done, giving them a decisive advantage. In two minutes, the Idenux formation came apart, nine survivors fleeing.
“Krissi. Pursuit. Run ‘em down.”
As Krissi spread her squadron out, the antimatter warheads her squadron carried raced out, each one marking the end of an Idenux ship in a boil of energy.
The other three squadrons quartered the shambles of the Idenux formation again, jinking, firing, running, concentrating, and firing again. Overloaded Idenux fire control systems went into reset. Systems failed. Damage mounted, and ships began to break formation and flee. The Idenux had discipline, but it was useless in a situation like this.
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