by Brian Smith
“So logged.”
“What’s going on, sir?” Sandoval added, confused.
“We’ve got company,” Ashburn replied grimly, feeding Sandoval the astronomical data. “Keep at least two telescopes padlocked onto that plume until I say otherwise. Quartermaster, begin running keplers on the bogey. I need quick-and-dirty trajectory data, soonest. Zach, I generated a draft message for the company and filed it yesterday—go ahead and send it now. Once you squirt it off, realign the main dish for Togo Naval Station. We’re going to yell for help.”
“Yes, sir.”
USS Ranger
Vicinity of the JL4 Trojans
“Admiral Costello, Togo Station has relayed us a distress call and keps for an inbound commercial torcher, along with keps for what appears to be a raider attempting an intercept. The raider’s drive signature matches the bogey USS Thach was tracking a week ago. She lost it when it unexpectedly went dark.”
“I remember. Well, well,” RADM Costello muttered, calling up his charts. “I knew that S.O.B. was up to no good.”
Ranger was the 5th Fleet flagship, one of only six America-class command vessels. Her entire TOA task force was out of Nimitz Station in the Jovian system, conducting a standard patrol sweep of the JL4 Trojans—fortuitously so, it would seem. As usual for such a deployment, the ships were not all clumped together in a single formation: they were spread out as thinly as could be, each responsible for patrolling and monitoring an enormous swatch of space. As it happened, Ranger herself was the only ship in position to render aid, at least soon enough to matter. The admiral called from his flag bridge down to the ship’s bridge.
“Captain, I’m sending you the information we have on this distress call. Issue an immediate recall to the air group, and then prepare to maneuver for intercept and to render assistance.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” the captain replied.
“Intel, what do we have on this torcher?”
“Commercial torchship Thuvia, admiral. U.S. flagged, registered to Barsoom Traders out of Mars. She’s new to the database.”
That made a few eyebrows go up. “Really? Check her drive signature and run her against the last database snapshot you have on file. Let’s make sure she’s not already stolen property.”
“Working it, admiral. One more item of interest: another Barsoom Traders torchship was listed missing a few days ago, back toward Saturn. Dejah Thoris.” The intel specialist paused, looking over his display. “This may not be just piracy, admiral. We might be witnessing some corporate warfare here.”
“Thuvia is under our flag, so we render assistance either way,” Costello replied firmly. “Besides, the drive signature on the intercepting raider belongs to a known bad actor. Our Japanese friends have been after that ship for some time, and she’s proven a tough one to catch. This may be the break we need to drop the hammer on her. Work the problem, people—the game’s afoot!”
***
1LT Aaron Jace “A.J.” McClain, USMC, was monitoring his feeds and listening to music when the recall order came. His EXF-3B Moray fighter was drifting through the Trojans, not far from Ranger in cosmic terms but well off each other’s lidar scopes. The recall wasn’t unwelcome; this sort of monitoring duty was boring as hell, and nothing ever seemed to come of it anyway.
McClain sent a command to recall his trio of AI-drone wingmen and to scuttle the cloud of disposable radar buoys his flight had launched to verify positions and keplers on the dozen or so large rocks he’d been assigned to check—all were large enough to pose a risk to Earth or some other target if someone shoved them onto a threat trajectory.
In addition to cataloguing asteroids, his job was to monitor any human activity falling within his sensor range and log it, standing sentinel against criminal activity. In all the patrol sweeps like this that he’d made in his career, he’d never found a single asteroid out of its charted position, flushed a single pirate, or answered a single distress call. In fact, his hatred of these sorts of patrols bordered on pathological. He understood that he was a volunteer, paid to be here in fact, and that it was a waste to let the ship’s air group just sit in the hangar with nothing to do when there were all these rocks to track. None of that changed the fact that it was the most boring, soul-killing duty he had ever performed.
It was over for today, at any rate. McClain hummed a happy tune as he tightened his straps slightly before getting to work. He had Ranger’s position on his network link and quickly ran the numbers for a quick burn home. He used the gyros to precess the fighter around, brought her small fusion torch online, and grunted as he gave her a short hard-burn: 9-g’s worth, to get her moving fast in the proper direction. Ships this size were almost fuel-critical from the moment they launched, depending on the mission. A high-g squirt was more economical than a long burn at low-g. He ran the burn until he had the velocity up to twenty-five kilometers per second, then cut the thrust and enjoyed going from 9-g back to free fall. He blinked away the tunnel vision and saw that the other ships from his squadron were all showing up clearly in the network, racing back toward their mother ship from wildly divergent patrol vectors. Each manned craft had a trio of unmanned wingmen in attendance, the same as his did. Such an arrangement gave a squadron of six human pilots a twenty-four-ship order of battle. The AI drones were slightly smaller than the manned fighters, had better range and greater maneuverability, and could take more than twice the acceleration. In a perfect world they could be trusted to operate autonomously. However, the world had proved imperfect during the Western Pacific War, and as a result no artificial intelligence was trusted with autonomous control of lethal ordnance.
“Hey, Homer,” his human wingman’s voice crackled in his ear, using McClain’s call sign. “What do you think’s going on?”
“The brass probably got a sniff of something,” McClain replied.
“Bulldogs, this is Ranger Actual,” interrupted the ship’s captain over their comm sets. “We need you back here soonest. Make it hurt, and you’re authorized to cut into your emergency-reserve fuel. Last Moray to trap buys the first round.”
“You heard the man,” called CAPT Reynolds, their squadron commander. “Bulldogs, kick it up!”
“Semper Fi, do or di-i-i-i-i-i-ie! Race you, Homer!” his wingman called.
“You’re on,” McClain replied, running the thrust back up to 10-g and commanding a shot of stims to keep himself from blacking out. His suit squeezed painfully at his extremities, and his life-support system force-fed him oxygen and respirocytes both. He strained to breathe, almost sobbing in pain as he began crunching the keplers for the adjusted velocities; it was going to hurt all the way in. As for who would be first and last, it was probably going to come down to pain tolerance, willpower, and who’d spent the most time in the gym recently.
Pain is just weakness leaving the body, he told himself. Gawd Almighty, but I’m going to be the strongest sumbitch who ever lived when this is over! He writhed under the force of ten times his normal weight. With a single command, he sent his drone wingmen racing ahead of him—they’d be aboard and secured before he even throttled down on the flip-side burn for recovery.
***
In Ranger’s flag plot, RADM Costello finished issuing orders to his chief of staff. He needed to redeploy the remainder of the task force to seal the gap they were leaving behind and to request a tanker from Togo Station to start in their general direction. They were probably going to need it, and that commercial torchship would almost certainly need it if she were forced into a lot of unscheduled maneuvering. The process of disseminating information down the chain of command through the ship’s departments began, in order for everyone to make ready for the impending action. Large command ships carried multiple “embarked” commands, including a company-size Marine combat team and a full Marine Air Group (MAG) that could land them and provide close combat support. There was no real historical oceangoing analog for an America-class torchship; by comparison she was a combination command-and-co
ntrol ship, battleship, light-aircraft carrier, and amphibious assault ship. Whether the ship embarked a MAG or a carrier air wing (CVW) was a matter of tasking by the numbered-fleet commander.
Costello watched the flag plot impatiently as the current cycle of fighters closed the distance and began recovery. Ranger’s flight-deck module boasted several launch-and-recovery decks, with hangars filling the gaps in between. It was possible to launch fighters and other auxiliary craft from rail catapults on the flight decks while under burn, hurling them safely clear of the torch plumes and leaving them behind as the ship accelerated past, but the ship needed to be in a free-fall trajectory to recover them. The British had come up with an elaborate magnetic-rail capture system to recover fighters while under thrust, but the U.S. Navy hadn’t seen the need to go to the expense of retrofitting their torchships with the invention. Right now, Costello wished they had—it would save a lot of time.
When the recovery was complete, the acceleration alarm sounded and Ranger ignited all four of her torches, boosting initially at a lazy 1-g while they secured from flight quarters and everyone manned their Condition II stations. Shortly thereafter, she throttled up to 5-g and the chase was on.
***
Whoever that torchship captain is, he knows his stuff, McClain thought to himself several hours later. He was in his acceleration couch in the VMF-52 ready room, mashed down under 5-g and watching the air-group commander’s (CAG) brief on his snoopers. Thuvia’s captain had done a smart thing, once he’d received a reply from Ranger along with her position and keps. He’d increased deceleration and held it, forcing the oncoming raider to adjust her own trajectory, bending her more steeply up-well to maintain the intercept.
After letting those trajectories percolate for a while, Thuvia’s captain altered course again to close with Ranger, severely complicating the opening velocity gap for the raider at the same time. Thuvia cut thrust after executing a very high-g, propellant-hungry course correction in order to keep her velocity up (since she was decelerating into the asteroid belt).
McClain wondered about the amount of thrust Thuvia had added during that last burst—it seemed to be much higher than any Marsmen in the torchship could probably tolerate for very long. McClain didn’t have time to go over the arithmetic, but he understood that the commercial captain had done a bang-up job of using the “cold equations” of interstellar trajectories to stymie his opponent. The raider was forced to throttle down, reorient, and hard-burn in what amounted to a torchship U-turn, the very sort of maneuver that torchships didn’t really do.
The way the picture looked now, Ranger and Thuvia would pass each other heading in almost opposite directions, well before the raider was in engagement range of either. Ranger could cut thrust or even decelerate, and would be in the perfect position to engage the raider as she came head-on. In fact, it was such a good solution for the good guys that any sane pirate would have cut his losses and run for it, but it was doubtful the raider had enough propellant mass to get away at this point. It was evident the pirates hadn’t been aware of Ranger’s proximity, and Ranger’s appearance had taken them by surprise. Oddly enough, the raiders were coming on hard and still burning—it was shaping up to be an interesting fight, and it looked like the pirate vessel was going to try to blow right by Ranger and stay after Thuvia. Slipping past an America-class torchship in a lickspittle little export gunship would be some feat; McClain was eager to see how it played out.
CAG briefed them on the role they would play in the impending fight.
“Five-One and Five-Two, you’ll launch ‘dark’ at engagement range minus one plus fifteen, taking up a stealth defensive-screening position: you’ll be Thuvia’s last line of defense if the bandit slips through. Drone wingmen will follow, forming an intermediate line between the manned fighters and Ranger’s engagement point. Ranger will continue to burn up-well, of course. Thuvia will pass down-threat of your holding position at time minus fifteen and continue to open your position rapidly. At time zero, Ranger will engage. The admiral’s original plan was to attempt a board-and-capture, but the velocity gap between us and the bandit makes that impossible. If there wasn’t a civvie to protect we could play this all a little differently, but we have to stop her cold before she gets off any shots off at Thuvia. Ranger will probably just end up blowing the bandit to atoms and that’ll be that. Questions?”
“Sir!” CAPT Reynolds responded. “Why doesn’t Thuvia continue her burn? The more range and velocity she builds, the safer she is.”
“She doesn’t have the delta-v to spare,” CAG replied. “She clearly anticipated this ambush and bent her inbound trajectory to try and avoid it—that cost them some propellant mass at the outset. Now she’s maneuvered twice more at high-g instead of doing a straight-line deceleration, and her mass tanks are running low. Her captain knows there’s a tanker coming, but these commercial types don’t like running their tanks completely dry any more than we do. As soon as the threat is eliminated, she’ll reorient and begin an adjusted burn for Achilles Hab. The tanker Toa Maru Is already on a slow burn toward us. All units will be able to tank up if required after it’s over. The captain will temporarily reduce thrust to 1-g at time minus one plus thirty-five for flight quarters. We’ll man up then. Dropships, you’ll man flight stations and load troops at the same time and then stand by for a possible boarding action if circumstances allow. Any further questions? No? Very well. Good hunting.”
***
McClain was back in his Moray a short time later, drifting up-well in zero-g at the exact velocity through which Ranger was accelerating when she’d catapulted him back into in the black. His fighter was mostly shut down at present: passive network links only, no active radar or lidar, and her small reactor in standby. Two squadrons of six fighters, along with CAG, had been launched, for a total of thirteen manned ships, which now formed a roughly diagonal line, each ship drifting at a slightly higher speed than the one behind, because the mother ship had been accelerating as she’d launched them.
McClain eyeballed his feeds and ran through the weapons checklist, rubbing absently at the numerous sore spots building on his torso. Even for a fighter pilot, it had been quite a day: from free fall to 10-g and back—and everywhere in between, it seemed like—and he wasn’t done yet. His pulse pounded with stims, moderated somewhat by respirocytes and the elevated oxygen content and pressure being supplied by his life-support system. Either way, he knew he was going to hurt for days to come. Out there ahead of them, Ranger proceeded to launch their AI-drone wingmen, adding another three dozen ships to the mix. That was the entire wad in terms of tactical fighters: the whole group was in play.
He watched through his visor as the big commercial torchship approached their position, invisible to the naked eye without her torch throttled up but tagged in his AR overlay. Ranger was now positioned between her and the threat, and her captain and crew were doubtless feeling a little safer.
Thuvia whipped past him in a blink, unseen. McClain strained his eyes at the proper time, but the torchship was far enough away that he didn’t see even a shadow against the stars as she blew past his position far faster than any rifle bullet.
Fifteen eternal minutes later, battle was joined. The raider proved itself not just a competent enemy but a dangerous one. Statistically speaking, there was no way for a Class IV gunship to win against a Class IA command ship, but that had never been the enemy’s goal. The raider only had to fight and maneuver to get past Ranger and her squadrons in order to survive; if the enemy could achieve that, an attack on Thuvia followed by a potential escape were still possible.
Ranger put an embarrassing number of semiautonomous, AI-controlled torpedoes into the sky, both offensive and defensive. The offensive torpedo spread went active on schedule and rushed the enemy gunship, which prompted an unexpected response from the enemy: the raider’s acceleration increased suddenly to 15-g, well beyond the rated capability of the enemy ship’s reactor. That changed the nature of the engagem
ent immediately; 15-g was considered an acceleration lethal to humans, so the raider gunship was reclassified as an unmanned drone under autonomous AI control. The high-g burst of acceleration altered the mathematics of the engagement, limiting the lines of approach far faster than initially calculated and drawing Ranger’s multiple axis, coordinated torpedo strike into a stern chase of relatively bunched-up weapons—a concentrated mess that was largely destroyed by a pair of defensive enemy torpedoes fired in rapid succession.
The first defensive torpedo fired by the raider was an EMP weapon with a power output far greater than anything they had a right to expect—it fried even the hardened electronics in the naval weapons immediately. A few moments later those weapons were engulfed in a thermonuclear detonation from the enemy’s second torpedo.
The leakers were engaged and destroyed by profligate fire from the gunship’s point-defense batteries, defeating Ranger’s primary fire plan. Having just executed turnover, Ranger laid on 6-g of acceleration to try to stay within firing range of her own weapons as the raider passed by her, but managed only some limited particle-beam damage before the enemy ship whipped past her and rapidly moved out of firing range.
Ranger had failed on her intercept. The order came over the network for the fighter squadrons to engage, but their problems were the same as Ranger’s: the raider was now coming on far too fast, and the projected firing envelopes of engaging fighters were going to be minuscule. Worse still, the Morays didn’t have a whole lot of firepower compared to their mother ship.
Behind them, McClain saw that Thuvia was reacting to these developments. She’d flipped over and throttled up again, decelerating once more as her trajectory carried her in the general direction of the Trojans. She and the raider were still moving in the same direction, but the raider’s high acceleration down-well meant that there was now a difference of 18-g in opposing acceleration between them; it was something of a repeat of the maneuver the torchship captain had pulled before, but this time it was more of a desperation play.