by Brian Smith
With the acceleration/velocity gap involved, the raider would overtake Thuvia so quickly that it would be hard for the enemy to get off a killing or disabling shot. Perhaps because of that, Thuvia’s maneuver forced the raider to react: it cut thrust, executed turnover, and rethrottled, right back up to 15-g. Now the raider was decelerating down-well, right into a cloud of waiting, darkened fighters. Although he probably didn’t realize it at this time, Thuvia’s captain had simplified the tactical problem for Ranger’s squadrons; a decelerating raider gave them a much larger window of engagement.
Improvise, adapt, and overcome, baby! McClain grinned under his helmet.
The order came to go active, and the squadrons reentered the active network and the battle. CAG issued the orders, and a total of forty-eight manned and unmanned fighters precessed back toward the Trojans and kicked in their torches as the raider barreled in behind them. The drone wingmen accelerated at more than 20-g, while the manned fighters were limited by their occupants to a maximum of 10-g.
Combat maneuvering followed, with the fighters adjusting course to form a loose, spiraling helix the raider would thread through as it passed their formation. Networked AI packages in the drone fighters formed a beehive-style cooperative-engagement groupthink that took over from their human pilots, now that human authorization for weapons release had been secured in accordance with ethics and the law. The trick now was to get the pirate to use up what remained of her ready ammunition—soaking up excess fire was one of the primary missions of unmanned craft.
Coordinated by their AI assistants, all fighters began salvoing off everything from radar buoys to missiles in a carefully precalculated manner. These objects, some dangerous and some not, all arced in toward the gunship, but the gunship wasn’t able to differentiate threats from non-threats through the mass of electronic jamming. Point-defense cannons began spitting streams of fire at jinking missiles, drones, and buoys, turning them to scrap. As a result of the gunship’s size and power ratings, she lacked particle-beam cannons for point defense—with them, the issue would have been in doubt. Inevitably, defensive fire began to taper off as ammunition ran out and the last of the weapons and makeshift decoys were destroyed. A few of the drone wingmen survived, maneuvering hard in the wake of the raider’s passage but unable to fire themselves.
CAG set the priorities for the ensuing attack runs, guided partly by trajectory data and partly by tradition: where possible, the senior pilots would lead the attack, assuming a slightly greater risk. CAG, followed by McClain’s squadron commander and her wingman, angled in as the gunship closed, and raked it with explosive cannon and particle-beam fire. They did some damage, but the remainder of the gunship’s point-defense ammunition spat out in return, and two of the three attacking craft went up in bright explosions. The third was shredded apart, going dark and tumbling into oblivion on its final trajectory.
McClain felt something hot and fiery explode inside him when he saw the CAG and one-third of his squadron’s complement of human pilots go down. He was next in line to attack; he rolled in hot with nothing but pure aggression in his heart, unsure whether the enemy had anything left to hit him with. One thing was certain, though: time was running out for Thuvia. The center of gravity for this fight was the raider’s torch—knock that out and the battle was all but won. Unfortunately, all he had left were his cannons, both projectile and particle-beam. The gunship would flash through his firing envelope too fast for either of those to do enough damage, so he was going go have to do something stupid.
Using his AI assistant to help and ignoring its squawks of protest, McClain angled his line of approach so that his fighter was on a collision vector—one that would put him squarely in the plume of the decelerating gunship for the split second before it simultaneously melted and ran over him. His sole advantage was that he was placing himself in the gunship’s one blind spot—it wouldn’t be able to see him. The hope was that, with all the jamming, the vessel’s AI would miss his moving into position, otherwise it could easily evade and cook him in the process. After that it was going to be a matter of timing—timing so precise that he had to turn it over to his own AI to execute it once he programmed his intent.
In space, McClain’s Moray continued its 10-g burn, angling in and down until both gunship and fighter were tracking along a single line. The ships were stern to stern, their torch plumes facing one another, with the range closing fast as their velocity gap decreased. The trick for McClain was to keep his acceleration going until the last possible moment—the less relative speed between them, the better.
“Bulldogs Four and Five, this is Bulldog Three,” he called. “If this works, the raider will go to free fall, but she’ll still blow out of my range before I can precess and hit her again. If I get her torch, the rest of you need to hit her torpedo tubes before she can finish reloading and fire on the merchant. That’s all we need for the win.”
“Copy that, A.J.,” his wingman called, sounding grim. “Semper Fi, bud.”
McClain swallowed, watching the countdown. His torch throttled down at the last possible instant, leaving him in a moment of merciful free fall. No time for the gyros—the AI fired the attitude jets, pitching her up hard and throttling up the torch again. Her plume lashed out behind her like an angry angel, pushing the fighter barely clear of the gunship’s approaching plume and raking her torch bell en passant with a plasma exhaust hotter than the interior of a star. The gunship’s torch bell slagged down one side instantly, causing plasma-backflow disruptions within the drive system and forcing a shutdown. A sharp, bright secondary explosion sent the gunship into a slow, free-falling tumble.
McClain coughed inside his cockpit, ignoring the wisps of smoke swirling around his helmet as he cut his torch and pitched for pursuit before throttling up again—at 4-g this time. He was at about the limit of his physical endurance, only half conscious after an extended run at 10-g, and he needed a moment to catch his breath even with the respirocytes cycling through his bloodstream. In the background, he was aware of alarms ringing in his ears as his biomonitor calmly informed him he’d taken a dose of radiation that, without treatment, would kill him in short order. His suit was injecting him with some preliminary radiation meds, but he needed a full sick bay or autodoc soon or that was going to be “all she wrote.” He tried to bring his AI back online for an assist on the intercept, but it was fried—in fact, most of the fighter was singed on the exterior and exhibiting an unhealthy radiation count all its own.
It was only then that McClain became aware of shouts in his ears: his squadron mates whooping it up over the success of his last-ditch play.
“Finish her off, Bulldogs,” he rasped into his mike. With the captain KIA, he commanded what remained of the Five-Two.
“Roger that!” came the reply.
In space, the remaining fighters pinwheeled down on the stricken gunship in succession as the latter drifted past them, and tore open her forward superstructure like a tin can, with brief bursts of explosive cannon shells and particle-beam fire. Her twin torpedo tubes, loaded or not, were turned into a mass of scrap from which nothing could be fired. One pilot in the Five-One even had a missile left, which their AI cooperative-engagement software sent right into the juncture of her torch bell and reactor compartment, blowing the bell clean off the stern of the ship—she wasn’t going anywhere now, except to drift along her most recent trajectory. Although the powerless hulk was falling away from them fast, her keplers were recorded so that what was left could be intercepted later by 3rd Fleet or 4th Fleet assets. For now, she was rapidly passing beyond the point Ranger could catch her without running the tanks dry on a high-g pursuit burn.
CAPT Khatri, skipper of the Five-One, had command of the overall group now. He ordered all fighters to to begin shedding velocity so that they could be recovered without Ranger having to expend too much propellant mass to match velocities. The Morays would burn down to their recovery reserve, then throttle down and drift until Ranger was either
in recovery range or could send an auxiliary craft to tank them. Thuvia had also throttled back down to about half a Martian gravity; after all the maneuvering, she was still falling away from them but with a constantly decreasing velocity gap. Just eyeballing the scope, the Marine pilots were able to determine that everyone ought to be matched up nicely within an hour or so.
Khatri ordered the surviving fighters to report status and fuel state; aside from their three losses, McClain was the one in dire straits. “How’re you holding up over there, Bulldog Three?” Khatri asked.
McClain felt like hammered crap, and his vision kept blurring out on him. When he spoke, he wasn’t aware how badly he was slurring his words. “I’ll be fine,” he croaked. “I could use a doc, though—I’m feeling a little well done, over here.”
“Can you put on a little more thrust? That’ll get you back aboard sooner!”
“I think I already tore something loose—I’d better not,” McClain replied. He throttled back up to 3-g only after the latest turnover; the others were leaving him behind, and he was falling back in Thuvia’s direction.
“Bengal Lead, this is Ranger Actual,” the ship’s captain called. “Switch over to channel sixteen. Thuvia wants to talk.”
“Wilco,” Khatri replied, opening the secondary, civilian channel. “Thuvia, Bengal Lead is on the net. Go ahead.”
“Bengal Lead, this is Thuvia Actual. I just want to pass along our heartfelt thanks and say that that was the ballsiest damn move I’ve ever seen someone pull in a Moray! Good shooting, Marines! How’s your pilot? Take a dose of rads?”
“Affirm,” Khatri replied.
“We can get to him before Ranger. Have him throttle down to 0.5-g and we can match up in . . . nineteen minutes. We’ll bring him aboard and dose him to the gills with antirads and Mindy—we’ll get him stabilized until we can transfer him back to you.”
Khatri was dubious at first; he didn’t know what kind of facilities a commercial torcher would have, next to the full-blown sick bay of the Ranger, but McClain didn’t sound so good. “Homer, you listening in? How are you doing?” he asked.
“Better do what he says,” McClain slurred, sounding in a bad way. “I’m starting to taste blood, and if I puke in this helmet, I’m probably done.”
Khatri nodded to himself. “Okay, Thuvia, sounds good. I’m sending you his keps.”
Barsoom Traders Torchship Thuvia
After getting a closeup look on optics and a radiation count, there was no way Ashburn was going to bring the stricken Moray into the hold. They matched velocity alongside instead, extending one of the soft-dock gantries almost close enough to touch the fighter’s fuselage.
Ashburn suited up and went out, along with Zach Sandoval; Ashburn led, given that he was familiar with Morays and their systems. Fortunately, McClain remained conscious enough to help as well. Both ships had throttled down to free fall; Sandoval winced as he watched his captain fearlessly jump the distance from the gantry to the fighter, not even waiting long enough to tether himself.
Ashburn broke expertly with his suit jets as he reached the cockpit, getting a thumbs-up from the pilot before pulling the external emergency canopy jettison. The fighter’s canopy detached upward and back, spinning away to become another eternal piece of cosmic flotsam. McClain activated the ship’s emergency beacon so that she could be recovered later and then shut down the remainder of her systems, leaving her cold and dark. He released his restraints and floated free, letting Ashburn clip them together and then move them back into the gantry with one expert shot of his jets. Sandwiched between Sandoval and the captain, McClain simply floated limp as the gantry was retracted back to the main lock, and they cycled in.
Ashburn pressed his helmet to McClain’s. “We’re going to put on just a little thrust—it’ll make it easier to move you!” he called. He saw McClain’s sluggish nod and called the bridge. Thuvia throttled up just slightly, putting them under lunar gravity. Sandoval and Ashburn took opposite ends of the almost-weightless pilot and moved him toward the infirmary.
McCLain’s flight suit was sort of a hybrid between a spacing jumpsuit and a full navy battle suit, performing some of the functions of the latter while remaining a little more lightweight like the former. It was a traditional olive green in color, and his helmet was a mottled-brown camouflage motif: that was an old Marine tradition, to serve as a reminder of a Marine aviator’s close infantry ties and, in this case, was a throwback to the helmets worn by Marines in World War II. A dark brown rectangular swatch in the traditional spot over the uniform’s left breast was embossed with gold naval aviator wings above McClain’s name and rank, and the Bulldog squadron logo was embossed on the right. A fifty-two-star American flag stood proudly on the right shoulder.
Once they reached the infirmary, Ashburn and Sandoval helped Donato strip McClain out of his gear and hooked him up to the autodoc in short order. The Marine pilot was barely conscious by this time; there were a few tense moments as the autodoc ran through its evaluation. Donato stood ready to override if the autodoc decided the patient was terminal, but fortunately her patient wasn’t that far gone. The machine chirped cheerfully, and Donato blew out a sigh of relief as it began administering the medications needed to counteract the dose of radiation McClain had received.
Ashburn stood by, still wearing his exosuit as he looked up at the displays, resting a hand almost protectively on the Marine’s chest. Ashburn knew he was out of his league and wasn’t sure what he was trying to read on the medical displays. He asked Donato if the pilot was going to be okay.
“He will be now,” she assured him, reaching over and patting his hand. “It’s a good thing they let us recover him. I’m not sure how much longer he could have gone before it was irreversible.”
“No shit—getting in the way of an oncoming torch plume like that is about as healthy as sunbathing naked in a solar flare. This guy really saved our asses. That raider just about had us dead to rights.”
“Well, at least we get to return the favor,” Donato replied.
“What’s the report on the crew? I put us under some hard acceleration.”
“Nobody died—that’s about the best I can say. I thought I was going to stroke out a couple times. I mean, it beats being dead, but jeez, captain! My request is that we avoid all fun adventures like this in the future. I suspect I’ll have half the crew in here in the next day or two for pain meds and to fix burst blood vessels. You gave everyone enough advance warning to strap in tight, so I shouldn’t see any broken bones—a lot of muscle pulls and strains, though.”
“Good,” Ashburn replied, mentally chewing it over.
He was beginning to feel a little giddy and tired from the adrenal letdown. The past several hours had been some of the tensest of their lives, but they’d survived, the ship was undamaged except for a little breakage here and there, and nobody had died. An analysis of the battle and his own actions would confirm what he already sensed—that he’d done well and could be satisfied with that, if not proud.
“What happens now, captain? I have to admit, being saved from pirates is new to my experience.”
Ashburn grimaced. “Mine too. Well, the first thing we have to do is buy some deuterium from the Japanese Navy. That means the second thing I’ll have to do is listen to Jerry bitch and moan about it for the next three days. After that I expect I’m going to spend the layover at Achilles under the bright lights, getting asked a lot of questions I don’t have answers for. Suffice it to say, my next few days are going to suck.”
“Beats being dead, boss,” Donato repeated.
“Yeah, I suppose.” He grinned ruefully a moment later. “You know all I really want?”
Donato crossed her arms, raising an eyebrow. “Let me guess: to go to Alpha Centauri?”
Ashburn nodded, turning and bouncing out of the infirmary in lunar-strength gravity. “That’s all I want!” his voice echoed down the corridor. “Could someone please throw me a bone, here?”
&nbs
p; Chapter 11
September 2093 (Terran Calendar)
USS Ranger
Achilles Habitat
The Dog House was Ranger’s onboard officer’s club. Every large navy torchship boasted off-duty clubs for its officers and enlisted personnel; the concept of the “dry” navy was another tradition that had fallen by the wayside in ’47. Consumption of alcohol aboard ship was limited to in-port or Condition IV cruising, strict rationing, and captain’s discretion—but it was allowed by regulations. This was a far cry from the past practice of crew members’ smuggling and hiding caches of liquor aboard ship, building stills, or visiting the ship’s sick bay for “medicinal” alcohol under every excuse known to man.
Given Ranger’s status as a “gator freighter”—an assault ship carrying Marines—the “Dog House” designation was a tongue-in-cheek reference to “Devil Dogs”—a moniker earned by the Corps during World War I. Navy and Marine memorabilia plastered the bulkheads, bolted into recessed alcoves so that it could withstand either zero-g or sudden hard accelerations under battle conditions. The bar was also built to withstand punishment, but it featured real glassware that was locked in cushioned cases when not in use. There was also a high-fidelity sound-and-entertainment system, some games, and the usual wireless feeds to the ship’s entertainment channels.
It had been years since Mike Ashburn had been in a navy club; the sights and sounds hit him like a slap in the face when he walked in dressed in civilian clothes and escorted by his host, A.J. McClain. Ranger was currently mated to Achilles Habitat’s docking ring, so the ship was experiencing almost full-g.
Ashburn carried a case under his arm and set it down with a grunt when they reached the Five-Twos’ table. He was glad he’d been training recently for standard gravity, and he made a conscious effort not to slouch.