by Andrew Beery
“This is a representation of the raiders that have been attacking GO worlds. Its mass seems to be consistent with what we are detecting in the four ships that have entered the Sol system. If they are indeed the same type of ship… and if they have not been modified from the ships we have experience with… then we know they can accelerate faster than we can but have a significantly lower top operation speed because of their shielding. That means in close-in fighting they have an advantage but in a long chase the Gilboa would have the advantage.”
I nodded. We knew all this. Mitty knew that we knew so he must have some other point.
“Since we cannot know how they will respond to us… we cannot know whether we should maintain speed of begin deceleration. The logical choice would be to…”
“Do both,” I finished for him.
Mitty wrinkled his nose. Whether that was from irritation that I had cut him off in my excitement… or if he was pleased that I agreed with his reasoning… I couldn’t tell.
Mike looked at the two of us.
“Somebody want to let us mere mortals know what you’re thinking?” Mike said with just a little irritation in his voice.
Chapter 11: Dog Fight…
I looked at Mitty. “You want to do it, or shall I?”
“It’s your ship, Admiral.”
I shook my head in defeat. The Archon had never really gotten into the spirit of the whole ‘informal’ thing. Mike and I had tried on several occasions to get him to loosen up. The closest we had gotten him to being informal was to call me Admiral Dog and the big Marine… Colonel Mike.
I leaned over table and grabbed a virtual representation of the Gilboa. I guided it along the table towards the ship Mitty had just added to the display.
“Here’s what we’re thinking. We slow just enough to match their velocity and revector to more closely match their course. We do all of this just prior to reaching weapons range. That way if they choose the run option… we are in a good position to pursue. Meanwhile, well outside of weapons range, we’ll launch a full flight of fighters.
“The fighters, which are faster and far more maneuverable, will intercept the intruders and keep them busy should the aliens choose the hard deceleration option. That will give us time to slow and return to engage our four friends.”
“It makes sense,” Mike said. “But what happens if they go for option A and decide to slug-it-out rather than decelerating? My guys are stuck in the middle of nowhere with no ride home.”
I shook my head.
“Got ya covered buddy. These aren’t like your grandpappy’s fighters. The new toys your guys will be flying can do about twenty-six gravities… maybe a little more. Even with the inertial dampeners, it won’t be a picnic… but it should be more than enough to get you to the Gilboa.”
***
Not long after, we broke up the meeting. We still had a little while before we came into visual range. I decided to grab a quick bite from the mess.
Lori joined me, and we talked about little things. Neither one of us wanted to discuss the possibility of an upcoming firefight inside the Sol system.
We had both caught the tail end of the last Federation dust-up but neither one of us had been in command of anything at the time. I had been a shuttle pilot and she had been a medical intern.
My grand contribution to the war effort had amounted to nothing more than dumb luck. I had been in the right place… at the right time. A bunch of fighter jockeys that had gotten their ships shot out from under them. I simply used the shuttle I was piloting to make a detour. The fact that the detour was into an active combat arena and that shuttles aren’t known for speed or shielding were side issues in my mind. They contributed to the risk that I took… but it was a personal risk. The shuttle was hit about sixteen times but by the grace of God the engines kept working.
People had said that I had been brave and fearless – I’m not so sure. A great general from a bygone era, George S. Patton once said:
If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man. All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened.
I was frightened then and I was frightened now, but for entirely different reasons.
I was frightened now, not for myself but for the men and women I might have to put in harm’s way. It didn’t matter that every one of them was a volunteer. This time around, I would be the man that sent them. I suspected that I would emerge from the other side of this a changed man. It turns out I was right. On a side note, I hate it when I’m right about crap like this.
***
“We are in optical range,” Mitty announced. “Bringing up the enhanced image of the main view screen.”
The four white dots that we saw suddenly resolved into slightly larger images. The resolution at this distance was not good but even I could see that the ships in question looked very much like the raiders that Mitty had shown Colonel Morrison and I in the Ready Room.
“Crap.” Mike muttered softly from someplace behind me.
I shared his sentiment. I mean, I knew intellectually that the odds of these ships being something else was astronomically low, but hope is a part of the human condition and we are at our best when we refuse to relinquish it.
“Bring the ship to red alert,” I said calmly. “Lieutenant Daniels, ahead flank speed until we catch up with them.”
We had spent the last several hours carefully revectoring ourselves using a cold ion thrust. Unfortunately, we had a lot of momentum carrying us in the wrong direction. We were going to have to shed that momentum by accelerating hard in the opposite direction. The engine’s exhaust would be pointed away from the ships we were approaching and the bulk of the Gilboa would also help to hide the hot ion gas, but no one was fooling themselves into thinking we would not be noticed.
The good news was it would take the radiation signature from our VASIMR drive several hours to reach the other ship by which time we would be well on our way towards catching up to them.
“Lieutenant Heinz, refine our course per what we discussed earlier. Bring us on a parallel course just outside of their weapons range. If they turn in any direction… don’t wait for my order. Adjust to remain just outside of their bite.”
“Roger that, Sir”
For the next few hours, we played a game of cat and mouse. Contrary to classic science fiction like you might see on a holovid, space battles were long drawn out affairs. Finally, when we got to within 0.6 A.U. of the enemy raiders, we received confirmation of their intent.
All four of the ships we were pursuing began to fire grape-shot from their lateral rail-guns. The idea of the grape-shot was a simple one. If we continued to accelerate into these small bits of fast-moving metal, we would be adding our kinetic energy to theirs and amplifying their deleterious effect on our shields. While our shields were still recovering, the enemy would likely fire their energy weapons.
The only problem was I had anticipated this possible plan of attack. Call me a spoil-sport, but I wasn’t inclined to play their game by their rules.
“Colonel Morrison, be so kind as to let your men know that they are a go in approximately five minutes. Then if you would, deliver our surprise package.”
Our surprise package was a new weapons system just installed on the Gilboa. Typically, our railguns fired a single kinetic round or grape-shot like our mysterious enemy had. The modifications we made to the Gilboa allowed her guns to launch special carrier shells that encased small fusion missiles with their own VASIMR drives. The weapons could achieve three times the top-rated speed of the Gilboa.
That meant we could use the explosion of the nuclear payload to clear the grape-shot out of our path long before we were in range to be affected by the blast. In addition, the EMP should seriously confuse and blind any active sensors… at least, that was the hope. Our own sensors were timed to briefly deactivate as the detonation took place.
I felt the G
ilboa shudder as two of our surprise packages left the tubes at near relativistic speeds. The energy used to launch them was impressive… especially given that it was enough to shake a ship the size of the Gilboa.
“Hyper-velocity missiles away, Admiral. Course is good. Missile two is vectoring 2 degrees to left as per plan.”
“Very good, Colonel Morr…”
Before I could finish the two devices detonated. The flight deviation between the two missiles was enough that the one did not destroy the other before it could detonate.
“LAUNCH FIGHTERS!” Morrison barked.
The intensity of the nuclear flash was beginning to fade enough that the bridge viewscreen, which had turned opaque, was once again displaying the field of engagement.
The four enemy ships were starting to spread apart, and they sought to surround us. It looked like they were going to take the running fire-fight option… at least that’s what I thought in the beginning. The reality is, in war, no plan ever survives contact with the enemy.
“One of the ships is accelerating slightly. Its course has been adjusted as well. Recalculating its trajectory,” Sandy said as she worked her board. I had a bad feeling I knew what she was going to say next.
The Lieutenant looked up at the forward viewscreen and then turned to me.
“Sir, its Earth. They’re heading to Earth.”
Sometimes, I truly hated being right. This was one of those times. The enemy knew that we had greater acceleration. The three ships staying behind forced our hand. If we pursued the one speeding ahead, we’d have to deal with the other three closer to our inhabited worlds. On the other hand, if we engaged these three, the fourth would have an uncontested shot at humanity’s homeworld.
Earth had defenses… the question had to be – would they be enough to defeat a threat of this magnitude?
“Send a secure packet to Earth,” I said. “Send a copy of our logs and advise them we are engaging three of the ships. Number four is going to be theirs to handle.”
I turned to Mike. The Marine had set his jaw and had a grim look on his face. I knew from the intensity in his eyes that what I was about to ask… he had already resigned himself to do.
“Colonel, we need to stop that last ship. Whatever it takes.”
“I understand, Sir.”
“If you would prefer, I can give the order.”
“Negative that, Sir. They are my men. I need to be the one to give the order.”
I nodded. The Colonel spoke quietly over the ship-to-ship comms. He was ordering his fighters to chase down and engage the fourth alien ship. It would be like bees stinging an elephant. It might irritate the elephant but it sure as hell was not going to stop it.
Even worse, it virtually guaranteed none of the fighters would have the fuel to return to the Gilboa. If they didn’t manage to stop the fourth ship, the Gilboa would have to give chase… assuming she survived her engagement with the other three. In any case, the chances were good that the air supply on the fighters would run out before we could come back for them.
In essence, we were sending forty men and women to their deaths.
I watched helplessly as twenty of the most advanced fighters ever to fly in the Sol system rapidly accelerated to engage an unknown enemy in what would likely be their first and only sortie.
The bridge fell into a silence as each of us said a prayer for the brave Marines who were about to give their last full measure.
“Three minutes to weapons range,” Mitty announced from the sensors station. His words broke the solemn trance that had enveloped the Gilboa’s bridge.
“Shields to one hundred and ten percent. Bring all plasma turrets to bear on the nearest bogey. Rail-guns are to load HVMs and launch a full spread at the other two ships. Let’s see if we can’t keep them occupied while we deal with the first one.”
***
The battle started off well enough. I was thankful that Whisker’s tweaks had enhanced both our shields and our weapons. We hit the first of the enemy ships with sixteen plasma beams, each about five percent more powerful than the ten we had started with.
In about ten seconds their shields buckled, and we began taking big chucks out of their hull. Suddenly, they stopped maneuvering. It looked like we had killed their power systems. We needed intel and I wanted prisoners, so I ordered my gunnery teams to start working over one of the other ships.
The two remaining enemies began a hard acceleration along the lines of the one that was already headed towards earth… only their vector was wrong. I was pondering what that meant when the first ship we had attacked, exploded.
The blast was orders of magnitude stronger than I had ever experienced. Mitty told me later that the enemy’s ships always self-destructed, and they used some type of antimatter scuttling charge. The Gilboa was engulfed in the blast.
There was no doubt in my mind that our enhancements just saved our lives. That said, I was going to have to have a conversation with my holographic friend about sharing critical information in a timely fashion. After-the-fact was not my idea of timely.
Fortunately, the shields held just long enough… but then they failed. We lost almost a foot of ablative armor in a fraction of a second. Powerful x-rays bathed the ship. Half the crew was going to have to start radiation treatments after this was all done.
The inertial dampeners tried to compensate as the ship was literally knocked thru space like a billiard ball on a pool table. Panels sparked, and a thin haze filled the bridge. The dampeners helped, but crewmembers were still tossed across the bridge and elsewhere on the ship.
Colonel Morrison went flying over the railing and would have been seriously hurt had someone not broken his fall… that someone was me.
Chapter 12: Wounded Dog
With my shoulder dislocated, I crawled back to my command chair.
“Status report,” I barked.
“Minor damage on decks three and four,” Mitty reported. “No hull breaches but the aft shield emitters are simply gone. If we take a hit anywhere near that area we are going to be in serious trouble.”
“Rotate the ship. Keep our damaged side away from those two other ships,” I groaned.
My arm hung useless at my side. I used my good hand to tuck the bad one into my shirt. It hurt like hell but that was the best I could do to immobilize it at the moment. I was sure the medical staff had much bigger concerns than a dislocated shoulder.
There wasn’t a question in my mind that those enemy ships would try a flanking maneuver to hit our weak side.
“Pay attention Helm. Keep our shields out.”
“I’m trying, Sir,” Daniels said. “She’s just not responding like she should.”
I could tell he was hurting too. It looked like a broken arm. His face was a mass for sweat. I had to give him points for grit.
“Mitty, Daniels needs to get to medical. Can you take over navigation autonomously?”
“Affirmative Admiral,” the hologram said.
“Sir, I’m good. I can stay at my station,” the Lieutenant objected.
“I know you can Lieutenant but in ten minutes the Doc can have that bone fused and I won’t have to worry about you passing out. Get a move on and get back here as fast as you can.”
“Roger that, Sir,” Daniels said as he made his way to the lift.
“Admiral,” Mitty interrupted. “I’m having trouble with computer control. It seems to be blocking my attempts to keep the damaged shields out of the direct line of fire.”
As he said this the Gilboa shuddered. Plasma beams struck near enough to the damaged section that some of their energy leaked through. If we didn’t get a handle on things soon we were going to be toast.
“Weapons, load rear-facing railguns with heavies. Fire when ready.”
“Sir,” Colonel Morrison said. “There’s no target back there.”
“Just do it Mike. Mitty, when he fires, disable station-keeping thrusters. There should be enough rotation vector to turn the ship.”
We ended up playing a cat and mouse game for the next few minutes. The big break came when we managed to catch one of the two ships with a cloaked nuke that we floated in space along with some debris we had collected. If the bad guys had taken a good look; they would have seen some very un-Galactic Order-like Gnats floating among the debris. The Gnats were cloaked and held our little nuclear surprises.
When the nuke took out the second ship, it also self-destructed. We were ready for it this time and had put more distance between us and the resulting antimatter blast. I had the Colonel queue up and then launch three more HVMs at the last ship right as we detected the blast from bogey two.
In a few seconds, bogey three joined one and two. For the first time since the battle began, we could stop to take a breath. It was a ragged breath and we would start the chase again soon enough. Such was the way with war.
Daniels was back at this post. Sandy had a massive bruise on her forehead. Besides my arm, those were the only injuries on the bridge. Neither Engineering nor environment had been as lucky. Casualties reports were coming in all across the ship. Lori was going to be busy for a while.
I decided to tough it out a while longer with my arm. There were others that were having a much harder go of it. In hindsight, that may not have been the finest example of my newly enhanced cognitive abilities. It just goes to show that even the smartest of us can be stupid.
“Helm, best speed. Let’s head on over to our boys taking on bogey four.”
I turned towards Colonel Morrison and grimaced as I tugged my arm. I was beginning to wonder if it might be more than just a dislocation. I gritted my teeth. That was a problem for another time.
“Mike, what’s the word?”
The big man shook his head. I could see in his eyes that it was not good. Sadly, I was not surprised.
“We’re down to five effectives. Some of the other fifteen might have ejected but there’s a lot of hard radiation floating around out there. It looks like they acquitted themselves well… bogey four paid a heavy price for my men’s blood. The enemy ship is still on course for Earth, but her acceleration curves are way down. We should have no problem catching her just shy of Mars’ orbit. And then I will take great pleasure sending them back to the hell that spawned them!”