Counterstrike

by D. J. Holmes

  *

  Slayer (eight hours and forty-five minutes later).

  Tanaka-lang altered a few variables in one of his simulations and started it running again. He was fine tuning his next attack against the Humans’ defenses. Multiple times he had threatened their moon bases, and yet not once had they used the weapons they had placed on the surface of the two moons. They were hiding something, of that he was certain. The question was, just what kind of surprise had they prepared? He wanted to find out before committing his forces to a full-scale attack. Being subtle had not worked, he was now toying with something more substantial.

  “Admiral,” a bridge officer said, “a messenger ship has just arrived from Gayla, the message is for you only. It has the Imperator’s seal.”

  Thoughts of his attack vanished as his head whipped around towards his officer. “Send it to me at once,” he ordered. Messages from the homeworld were rare; ones from the Imperator himself even more so. When the data file was transferred to his command console, it required the unique access code the Imperator had given him personally to unlock. When it did, he quickly scanned it. After reading the first two paragraphs he paused. For a moment, he almost thought it was a joke. If it wasn’t for the Imperator’s seal he would have been certain it was. And yet the Imperator did not jest. He read on. What he found made him snarl. Then he smashed his fist into his command chair. The fighter reinforcements he had been expecting had been delayed. Rather than arriving within the week, they wouldn’t arrive for another month. Worse, he would be receiving less than half of what he had been promised.

  “What is it Admiral?” Slayer’s Captain asked in a conciliatory tone, it was clear he feared Tanaka-lang would take out his anger on his subordinate.

  “It’s nothing,” Tanaka-lang lied. The Imperator’s seal meant that what he had just read was being kept a secret from the lower ranks of the fleet. He understood why. Somehow, the Humans and a group of other species Karacknid scouts had determined to be of no threat had penetrated to the far side of the Empire. They had attacked tens of systems and caused a colossal amount of damage. Tanaka-lang could hardly believe it. He had no idea how Human ships had gotten to the far end of the Empire. It should have taken a year and more to get to where they were. Yet somehow they had, and now the Imperator and his military advisers were up in arms. The brief report of the incursions included with the Imperator’s files was confused. No one knew quite what had happened. Yet it was clear it had only been a small force. There was no need for the Imperator to send four of the new carriers to re-establish control. Nor half of the one thousand brand-new warships he had been promised as well. “They are overreacting,” Tanaka-lang growled to himself quietly. “Badly,” he added as he turned his attention to the Human colony he now knew they called New Shanghai. Without his fighter reinforcements the Human fighters would outnumber his. By how much, he didn’t know yet, he was certain the Humans hadn’t revealed their full strength, but he knew they would outnumber him one way or another. That meant his capital ships would take unnecessary losses when he finally moved in to crush the colony. Losses that the Imperator would not be happy with. Losses that I will be blamed for, Tanaka-lang thought angrily.

  As new contact alarms sounded, Tanaka-lang growled again. “What is it now?” he asked, frustration filling his words.

  “We’re detecting fighter launches from some of their carriers and orbital hangers,” an officer reported as quickly as he could. When Tanaka-lang turned to him, the officer wasn’t even looking in his direction. “They’re forming up together now.”

  Tanaka-lang forced himself to dismiss thoughts of the fighters he desperately wanted and focus on the matter at hand. The Humans were up to something. This was the first offensive move they had made since his battlefleet had entered the system. Though he tried, he still felt anger flowing through him as his claws sunk into his command chair. The Humans had found a way to frustrate his advance, and they had put the plan into motion months ago. Somehow they had anticipated his fleet’s offensive and counter attacked from the opposite end of the Empire. He had no idea how they had done it, but they had. And they are up to something else! “Launch all fighters,” he ordered. The Humans already knew how many he had, there was no need for him to try and hide his numbers. “Prepare them to intercept the Human fighters if they make a run at our capital ships. Launch more probes towards the colony, I want to know if they’re covertly launching any more fighters. Wait…” He said quickly as the last of his anger cleared and he focused more clearly on the problem. “Don’t just send probes towards the colony, spread the shell out around all of our fleets. If there is even so much as a single fighter out there trying to sneak up on us, I want to know about it.”

  “Enemy fighters are breaking orbit,” the sensor officer reported three minutes later.

  Tanaka-lang glanced at Slayer’s Captain. His subordinate waved a claw to signal a negative. No other fighters had been detected yet. Where are you going? Tanaka-lang asked the fighters as he watched them accelerate away from New Shanghai. They weren’t on a course that would allow them to attack any of his fleets. Which means what? That they don’t want to attack us? “If they remain on the same course, can our fighters intercept them?” Tanaka-lang asked his officers.

  “At the moment yes,” a tactical officer answered. “But they’re not using their maximum acceleration. And our fighters are split up to protect all of our fleets. If we waited to combine enough squadrons to outnumber them, they’d be past us.”

  His subordinates last words sent a new thought running through Tanaka-lang’s mind. The only thing past his besieging squadrons were the supply convoys and the mining freighters he had gathering the asteroids. The convoys were on their way out of the system having already delivered the fuel his ships needed. That left only one real target. An extremely valuable target, he thought, now certain that he knew what the Humans were up to. But one worth sacrificing one hundred and twenty of their fighters? he asked next. Unless they don’t plan to sacrifice them. “Their carriers!” Tanaka-lang said when it hit him.

  “Pardon Admiral?” his Flag Captain asked.

  “I want probes targeted at the carriers they have in their reserve formation stationed between their battlestations,” Tanaka-lang demanded. “Confirm that they are indeed carriers.” I know they’re not, Tanaka-lang said to himself as his subordinates obeyed his orders. It was the only thing that made sense. “Organize twenty scouting squadrons. Twenty ships each. Put one light cruiser in charge of each. I want them heading out towards the outer system immediately.”

  “What part of the outer system?” The tactical officer asked.

  “All of it,” Tanaka-lang replied as he stared at the carriers at the heart of the Human defensive fleet. They had to be fakes. Good ones, but fakes, nonetheless. He altered the display of the holo projector to show the rest of the system. Somewhere out there the Humans had hidden their carriers. That was how they planned to save their one hundred and twenty fighters. The fighters would attack his mining freighters and then land at their carriers. Then they’ll have a whole attack force of fighters behind my lines. They could raid incoming supply convoys at will. “Inform the ships escorting our mining freighters that they’re going to have company,” Tanaka-lang said as he let out a growl. The Humans were frustrating him again.

  “What about our nearest fighters, shall we order them to intercept this Human group?” Slayer’s Captain asked.

  Tanaka-lang was tempted to give the order. Even if his fighters were outnumbered, they’d take out some of the Human ones and disrupt their plans. “No,” he responded. As much as the Humans getting fighters behind his blockading fleets would be an irritation, he needed every fighter he could get for the main battle. Even more so now that his reinforcements were not coming. “The mining freighters’ escorts will have to fend for themselves.” And we’ll see just how well these Human fighters cope with surprises, he thought.

  *

  Captain Samantha D
ee, commander of Black Squadron, watched the nearest Karacknid fleet closely as her wing of fighters and bombers zipped past them. She breathed a sigh of relief when they neither moved to intercept her nor launched fighters to give chase. We are clear, she thought, surprised by how easy the maneuver had been. Her primary target was the fifty mining freighters. Even without plasma anti-ship missiles, a single squadron of Spitfires or Lancasters could take out the freighters with their small plasma cannons. One hundred and twenty fighters were overkill. The size of the force had been designed to stop any Karacknid fighters from waylaying her. It seemed to have worked. With a tap of a button she flicked her COM over to her fighter wing’s COM channel. “Okay ladies and gentlemen, it looks like it will be plain sailing for the first part of our mission. Settle in and get comfortable. It’s going to take us two hours to reach our targets. When we get there we’ll hit the escorts first. Then we’ll move in for the kill. It looks like the Karacknids are going to let us take out every one of those mining freighters. We’ve all read the reports of how devastating asteroids can be in a siege. This will be a great boon for the fleet. Cut your engines now, we will coast to our target until I say so.” After each of the nine other squadron leaders in her attack wing acknowledged her words, she followed her own orders. Squishing herself down into her flight seat, she cut her engines and took her hand off the flight stick. After carrying out a few stretches she prepared herself for the wait.

  Twenty minutes before her fighters were scheduled to reach their targets, she activated her COM unit. “Flight leaders, warm up your fighters. We’ll carry out three course changes to reorientate ourselves for the attack,” she informed them. Right now her ships were on the ballistic course they had taken from New Shanghai. If she didn’t alter course, the Karacknids would be able to predict exactly where she would attack from. Though there were only ten destroyers protecting the mining freighters, she wasn’t going to get sloppy.

  As her fighters powered up their engines and followed her maneuvers, the ten destroyers, already in a defensive formation, moved to intercept her force. The mining freighters were hiding amongst the thick planetary ring of asteroids as best they could. If Dee planned to fire her plasma missiles at maximum range it might do them some good, but as soon as the enemy escorts were destroyed, she intended to send her ships in to get up close and personal with the freighters.

  As she gently put pressure on her flight stick to begin the third maneuver, Dee’s senses were assaulted by the blaring of several alarms. Her gravimetric plot filled with new contacts. Eighty new ships had appeared. They were accelerating hard straight towards the mining freighters on a course that converged with her fighters. Dee swore as she silenced the alarms. The Karacknids have hidden extra escorts! For a second she froze as she stared at the ships. They had the firepower to decimate her force. Then her training kicked in. Focus on the mission, she told herself. Three squadrons could easily take out the ten destroyers protecting the mining freighters. Then they could use their plasma cannons on the mining freighters. “Scarlet, Wasp and Sabre squadrons, take the ten Karacknid destroyers and the mining freighters. The rest of us will engage this new Karacknid force. We’ll buy you time to hit those freighters,” Dee ordered over the COM channel to her squadron leaders.

  She input a new course into her flight computer and sent it to the squadrons that would follow her. “Break towards the new Karacknid squadron in three, two, one,” she ordered as she twisted her flight stick. After making sure that her squadron was still in formation and the six others she had with her were as well, Dee focused on the new Karacknid fleet. She picked out the most dangerous ships and assigned them as primary targets to her fighters. Then she gunned her Spitfire’s engines and led her eighty-four fighters in against the eighty Karacknid escorts. Soon space all around her fighter was filled with Karacknid point defense fire. Twisting and weaving, she did her best to make herself as difficult a target as possible. In her peripheral vision she was aware of a constant eruption of explosions as some of her people were taken out.

  As her rage at the losses built and her own fear swelled she erupted into a scream. It kept rising in pitch as she got closer and closer to her target. She only cut off when she smashed the missile control button on her flight stick. She pulled up and away, continuing her random jinks and twists. Though she was tempted to glance back towards the light cruiser she had targeted, she resisted the urge. The enemy fire zipping past her was too thick for her to break her concentration even for a millisecond. Only when it finally slackened and died away completely did she look back at the Karacknid squadron. Forty or more of its ships had been destroyed or were trailing behind the others, debris streaming from them. “All fighters form up on me,” Dee ordered as she allowed her fighter’s momentum to carry her away from the Karacknid squadron. On her sensor plot, only forty-eight contacts moved to close with her Spitfire. Thirty-six gone, Dee thought as she was hit by a stinging sense of loss. It made her turn her head to seek out the three squadrons she had sent after the Karacknid mining freighters. She nodded in satisfaction when she saw that all ten destroyers that had been screening the freighters were gone. The remaining fighters in the three squadrons were already amidst the gas giant’s ring, plasma bolts raining down onto the mining freighters.

  For nearly a minute, Dee watched freighter after freighter be blown apart. Then a large group of new contacts closed in on the planetary ring. The Karacknid squadron had arrived. Suddenly the fighters that had been enjoying free rein against the freighters had to dodge massive amounts of enemy fire. Dee’s hand almost twitched down to grab her flight stick. She wanted to turn her Spitfire and join the battle. Yet none of her fighters had enough fuel to overcome their current momentum and charge the freighters. Not if they wanted to get back to the carriers Commodore Chen had hidden on the far outskirts of the system. We can hit them again, she said to herself as she watched the battle continue. We can refuel, rearm, and hit them again. It didn’t make her feel any better as she helplessly watched more of her fighter pilots be killed.

  For another couple of minutes the fighters tried to avoid everything hurled at them and still hit the freighters. A handful more of their targets were destroyed. But their losses quickly mounted. When there were just sixteen fighters left, they broke away from the engagement. One more was taken out as it fled. The rest turned and put themselves onto a rendezvous course for Dee’s fighters. As they closed, Dee surveyed the Karacknid forces. Nineteen of the fifty freighters had been destroyed. More than a third of the Karacknids’ asteroids were gone. Yet they had been hoping to take out all of the freighters, or at least the vast majority of them. The attack had failed. This time, Dee thought as she tried to rally her emotions. It would take ten hours for her fighters to reach the hidden carriers and return to finish the job. But when they did, she promised herself there would be none left.

  *

  Tanaka-lang watched the Human fighters’ attack on his mining freighters closely. When nineteen of the freighters were destroyed, he dug his claws into his command chair. Nineteen was more than he had been expecting. The Humans had responded well. Yet he still had enough for his purposes. Not for the first time, he wished he had brought more with him. He had literally thousands of freighters in his supply train, yet none of them had the special equipment needed to mine asteroids and prepare them for what he had planned. There were tens of thousands of such freighters within the Empire, but they were all months away.

  As the Human fighters broke away from their attack, he continued to watch, even more interested now than before. He wanted to find their carriers. He was hoping the direction they fled in would tell him something. For two hours he directed the twenty squadrons he had dispatched to the outer system. Methodically they searched every position he suspected the carriers to be hiding in. As they lost track of the fighters, and then failed to get even a whiff of their carriers, he gave up with a growl. First his reinforcements had been cut in half and delayed. Now he had lost a sign
ificant proportion of the asteroids he had been preparing. And the Humans will be getting reinforcements, he thought. He had no doubt that the Alliance would be racing fleets into Human space to save their neighbors. Right across the front line with the Alliance he had given orders to his commanders to begin offensives of their own but his enemy was wise enough to recognize that his battlefleet was the main threat. The longer we delay, the more ships they will get into this sector of space, he thought as he turned his attention back to New Shanghai and the Human fleet there. With his reinforcements delayed, there was no benefit to him prolonging this siege. With a tap on his command chair he brought up a file of the expected arrival time of the warships he had left behind to await enough supplies to push forward. Another squadron of three hundred warships was expected at any moment. Then we will wait no longer, he thought as he returned his gaze to the Human fleet. It is time to put an end to this. The Humans could sneak fighters behind his fleets all they wanted, once he crushed New Shanghai, it would make no difference. “Signal our mining freighters, order them to rendezvous with us immediately. Bring up the other munition freighters we have prepared. It is time to put our attack plan into motion.” He was done probing the Human defenses, whatever surprises they had, he would just have to blast his way through them with his superior numbers.

  Chapter 44

  Showing your enemy one easy target while you hide your real strength is one of the oldest tricks of warfare.