Chapter 6

Eric was aboard CCS-14, monitoring the advancing Terran Federation ships, as they moved towards his task force. After a little over two years, Longreach now had a nice little navy formed; thanks in part to the TF's policy of dropping civility, and trying to force planets into subjugation.

Eric had helped this fledgling navy with a bit of technical support. For example, a small task force such as this should not try to take on a force of the size of the battle group that was now approaching them.

Eric had given the Longreach's navy ideas for improved missile pods. Each ship had missile pods attached to their hulls as external ordnance. There were ten missiles to a pod. This external ordnance helped with an initial 'throw weight' of missiles at enemy ships.

Eric had also designed a new type of missile pod, that was too big and unwieldy to attach to any ship. They were mounted and fired from a special missile barge. What he did was to put a small antigravity engine on the back of a missile pod. He mounted sensors and a small computer; and then, finally mounted a small nuclear warhead on each pod.

The result was a missile pod with a greater range than anything known in this galaxy. In theory what would happen was this. The task force was to fire the one thousand missile pods at the advancing TF Battle group. They were going to fire from an extended range, but this should cause the TF to start firing counter-missiles early. Once the pods had traveled a pre-set distance, or were fired upon, they would then fire the 10,000 missiles they were carrying.

This would confound the enemy, causing them to respond with more counter-missiles. While this was going on, the task force would still be closing, and they would have yet to fire a single volley of any missiles from its ships! The small task force should then be able to overwhelm the TF battle group, easily.

One of the surprises for the TF, was when they shifted course to get themselves out from under the weight of the missile pods coming towards them. Unfortunately for the TF, the Longreach's missile pods shifted with them!

Admiral Mike Perry aboard the Terran Battleship England had been puzzled when the enemy had fired so early. One thousand missiles, while dangerous, were well within the battle group's ability to handle.

He first ordered the BG to change course. Changing course should negate the incoming missiles. He wondered what the commander over there was thinking. Two minutes after the BG had changed course, his tac officer reported the missiles repositioned and were proceeding at a new intercept course.

"Ok. We have something new, here. Nothing we can't handle, people. I want a counter-missile barrage laid down, with enough missiles to take out that group of incoming," the admiral ordered briskly.

The entire BG fired counter-missile after counter-missile at the approaching missile pods. 1500 counter-missiles were fired. Then the waiting game began, to see how well his men and woman had performed.

Their barrage was still several minutes from the time it should start taking out the enemy pods (which they were still tracking as missiles, and not pods), when his tac officer interrupted his train of thought.

"Missile launch! I have multiple missile launches from the incoming missiles," the tac officer commander Jerry Hilton stated grimly.

"What do you mean you have missile launches from the missiles?" Admiral Perry asked.

"Sir, the computers are telling me that the incoming missiles we were tracking have just launched what appears to be counter counter-missiles," replied the tac officer with incredulity.

It was true. Each pod carried two counter missiles. 2000 counter-missiles were launched by the pods when they sensed the incoming barrage of missiles. While they took out a majority of the 1500 missiles coming at them, some did get through. A total of 400 of the battle group's anti-missile missiles got through the counter barrage.

The pods that were targeted fired their loads just prior to being taken out of existence. Most of the targeted pods got some, if not all of their missiles off in a timely manner. Still, only 298 missiles from those 400 pods, managed to get clear.

The TF admiral watched as his BG fired yet more counter-missiles to take out this new threat. They also fired more counter-missiles at the incoming missiles, which had somehow fired yet more missiles!

"Have we figured out how they managed to fire so many missiles from the original missiles, yet?" Admiral Perry asked.

"Intel tentatively says that they might have fired modified missile pods at us sir. Though how they could launch a missile pod to do what these do, and retain only a missile signature reading, is beyond their ability to say at this time, sir," replied his Intel officer.

The admiral mused silently to himself as he watched the incoming missile tracks vanishing as his new counter missile barrage finally took them out.

"What is our remaining counter missile load at this time?" he asked his adjutant.

The woman looked at her read outs, did something to her board, and looked up with a pale expression on her face.

"We are down to 40 percent of our original load, sir. They have effectively stripped away 60 percent of our counter-missiles and we have yet to engage the enemy," she said.

Almost as soon as she finished speaking, the tac officer spoke.

"Missile launch! I have multiple missile launches, from the incoming missiles! Tracking shows 6021 missiles launching from the incoming missiles, sir!" the tac officer said excitedly.