by Jay Allan
He considered ordering his people to follow him in a strafing run, but he knew it would be pointless. The lasers on his fighters were laughably weak, and attempting to get close enough to use them to effect would cost him every one of his ships. His people had done what they could. It was time to go back.
“Let’s get away from this fire,” he said, trying to keep the frustration from his voice.
He pulled back on the throttle, checking on the display to make sure his squadrons were following suit. Then his comm crackled to life. It was Timmons, shouting excitedly, “We got it, sir…two solid hits. I’d bet the rest of my fuel we took that gun down.”
“Well done, Lieutenant…my congratulations to your squadrons.” The destruction of one of the enemy weapons was good news. At least the battleships would only have to face one giant laser as they approached…which they were doing even as his fighters were falling back into formation and blasting away.
One down…that’s a lot better than none…
But it still tore at him that he’d missed that shot…
Chapter Forty-Four
Bridge
CFS Intrepid
Varus System
308 AC
Intrepid shook, and Eaton’s body snapped forward against the straps of her harness. The enemy laser packed a serious punch, and she knew her ship couldn’t take too many hits like that.
“Damage control, Commander.” She was on her line with Merton almost immediately.
“The primaries are down, Captain. We’ve got serious hull breaches along sections D4 through E5. I’ve got reports of multiple fluid and gas leaks, and several areas appear to be cut off. Casualties are heavy, Captain, but I don’t have any numbers yet.”
“I need those primaries, Commander. Whatever it takes.” She scared herself a little with her tone on those last three words.
“We’re trying, Captain. I have half my people working on the guns right now. I think I can get them back online for you in a few minutes, but if we take many more hits from that thing, we’re going to lose them for good.”
“Just do what you can, Commander. As quickly as you can.”
She cut the line. “Commander Nordstrom, I want evasive maneuver frequency doubled. We’ve got to evade that weapon’s fire. I want random bursts of thrusts, one to ten seconds in duration. We’ve got to throw off their targeting…and while our primaries are down, we don’t have to worry about throwing off our own aim.”
“Yes, Captain.”
Eaton watched the display as Dauntless fired her primaries again. The powerful beams lanced out and struck the station. The thing was immobile, and so big it was almost impossible to miss. But even the deadly power of the Confederation particle beams seemed to disappear in its enormous bulk. The hits caused damage, no question, but none of it seemed to threaten the overall structure. The two Confederation battleships would have vaporized an enemy capital ship by now, but the station just floated there, defiant, seeming to mock all attempts to seriously damage it.
“Captain, Commander Jamison requests permission to begin landing operations for his squadrons.”
“Permission granted. Advise the commander that the bays are in pretty rough condition. His pilots are to exert all due care when landing.” Or one of them will wipe out, and the rest will be stuck out there.
Eaton knew she was lucky the bays were operable at all. It was one lucky break, at least.
Now if Merton can just get me those primaries…
Even as the thought went through her mind, however, a troubling realization followed it.
We’re not getting it done. We’re damaging the thing, but we just don’t have enough firepower to seriously threaten it.
The greater number of secondary batteries the ships carried might prove more effective, if not in destroying the station, at least in causing widespread damage. But closing the range was out of the question while that huge laser was still active. She was as determined as Barron to blast the thing to hell, but she was starting to lose hope that they’d get it done.
“Fighters landing now, Captain.”
The fighters? Could her damaged bays possibly turn them over as bombers? The plasma torpedoes packed a serious punch…and just maybe three or four squadrons unloading could make the difference.
“Get me launch control, Commander. Now.”
* * *
“Keep firing.” Barron was standing next to his chair, the straps of his harness lying loose about the seat. It was a bad example for his people, but right now he didn’t care. Dauntless and Intrepid had been pounding away at the station for over an hour. They were digging into it, tearing off great chunks of hull with each shot, but the construction was just too enormous. Barron had no doubt they were taking out factories and machine shops, fuel storage tanks, and all other manner of support systems…but not enough of them. That station had been built—and how it had been constructed was still a mystery to him—to support the greatest battle fleet post-cataclysmic space had ever seen. Barron knew it must contain hundreds of manufacturing facilities and vast materials storage, and his destruction of a few of those was not going to halt the Union invasion. He had to destroy the whole thing. But how?
“Commander Travis, advise gunnery crews I want that laser battery silenced.” He was frustrated as hell. As much fire as his people—and Eaton’s—had poured into the station, its heavy gun was still lancing out. Both battleships had been hit. Dauntless had suffered a glancing blow, but even that had been damaging. Intrepid had just taken her second hit, and reports coming in suggested she’d lost her primaries. That left Dauntless alone in the fight right now, and he had no illusions about how badly his ship had been hurt, or how tentatively Fritz had patched her systems back together. Time wasn’t on his side. Sooner or later, fresh Union forces would arrive. Then it would be over.
“They’re trying, sir,” Travis replied. “That thing is well-situated. It’s hard to get a line on just when it moves out.”
“Then they’d better catch it deployed,” he snapped back. But he knew even as he spoke, it was his frustration talking. The enemy weapon only deployed to fire, and it pulled back into its protective enclosure immediately after. He’d seen the reports from the probes. The gun was out for perhaps one and a half to two seconds each time, and there was no detectable warning before it fired. At seventy thousand kilometers, it was a quarter of a second before the light of the weapon deploying even reached Dauntless’s scanners. Then, it would take just over a third of a second for the particle beam to reach the station. That left barely one second to respond. The AI might manage it, especially against a mostly stationary target like the station. But there was more to targeting than deciding to fire. The particle guns took more than a second to execute a shoot order, even from full charge. That meant the only way to catch the enemy laser out of its shell was to guess when it would fire. And that wasn’t a strategy that gave Barron a warm feeling.
Travis didn’t respond. Barron was well aware his exec knew he wasn’t expecting an answer. If anything, she knew him better than he did himself.
“Captain,” Travis said a few seconds later, “Captain Eaton reports she is outfitting all available fighters with bomber kits and plasma torpedoes.”
Barron was a little surprised. Intrepid had taken considerable damage in the battle with the station. It would be a minor miracle if Eaton could not only launch a wave of fighters, but manage to outfit them with the cumbersome bombing kits inside her tortured landing bays.
“Very well, Commander. She is to launch a strike as soon as she has the forces ready.” He still wasn’t sure he believed her bay crews could pull it off, but anything would help right now. Eaton had to be climbing the walls with her primaries down, and he realized his comrade was trying to come up with any way to lash out at the enemy.
Barron felt a renewed frustration at the condition of Dauntless’s own bays. The pilots over on Intrepid had to be exhausted, their ships worn down to a nub…and his squadr
ons were sitting around trapped on the ship, dying to get at the enemy.
“Commander Fritz is on your line, sir.” Barron’s head spun around. Anything from Fritz was vital right now.
“Fritzie, what is it?”
“Captain, I had a chance to review the latest scanning data on the station.”
“Have you found a weakness?” Barron felt a rush of excitement. If there was one person in post-Cataclysmic space who could tear apart some kind of construction in her mind and find a way to take it down, it was Anya Fritz.
“Maybe, sir.” She sounded a little uncomfortable, like she wasn’t sure she should be bothering the captain with half-baked theories.
“Let’s hear it, Fritzie. If someone on this ship is going to come up with something, it’s you.”
“Well, sir…I started looking at the thing, and I put my engineer’s hat on, trying to figure out how they move it. We know they must, but it’s pretty clear it wouldn’t fit in a transwarp link.”
“I know, Fritzie…we’ve all been wondering that. But that’s not really a priority right now, is it?” He was disappointed. It wasn’t like Fritz to waste time with off-point concerns during battle.
“Yes, Captain…I mean, I think it might be. A priority, I mean.”
“How so?”
“I’ve been going over the schematics. We’ve got much better data from the probes now than we had before. I think it comes apart, Captain.”
“Comes apart?” Barron was confused. “Yes, I guess it would have to if it doesn’t fit, but I still don’t see that it helps us that they have to disassemble the thing and rebuild it every time they move it.” Barron still couldn’t understand how the Union forces managed to pull that off in the time frame their lightning advance must have required.
“No, Captain. I don’t think they take it apart, at least not the way you’re thinking.”
“I’m not following you, Fritzie.”
“I think it’s modular, Captain. I believe it’s designed to separate into numerous sections, each small enough to be towed through a transwarp link.”
“Modular?”
“Yes, sir…it’s actually brilliant.” Fritz’s voice became animated, her engineer’s appreciation for any device that met her high standards for ingenuity.
“Commander, I’m not sure now is the time to discuss the Union’s technical achievement.” Barron knew it was just the engineer inside Fritz reacting to something she thought was clever…but right now, in the middle of battle, he wasn’t in the mood to hear how brilliant the enemy had been.
“No, sir…I mean, yes sir, I do recognize the shrewdness of the design. But that’s not why I commed you. I think we can use the design against them. I think we can destroy it.”
The last words hit Barron like a sledgehammer. “How, Fritzie? Tell me.”
“If I’m right, that station is engineered for rapid disassembly and reassembly. I’d bet last month’s salary those sections bolt together, and they come apart, probably in pieces small enough for a freighter or battleship to tow through the transit link…to another gas giant with enough tritium to support their refining operations, and a nearby asteroid belt for raw materials.”
“You may be right, Fritzie, and I’m sure it’s an engineering marvel, but I still…”
“Don’t you see, sir? Those sections might be held together solidly enough for the thing to hold in orbit, and to withstand the rigors of normal operations, ships docking and pushing off and the like. But those connections have got to be weak points. If we target our fire there, we might be able to break up its structural integrity.”
Barron felt a wave of excitement, but it almost immediately subsided. “That may be, Fritzie, but how can we find those spots? The thing is heavily shielded. We can’t get any deep scans.”
“I think I have an idea where, sir. I’ve been staring at the thing, and I’m pretty sure I’ve got it figured out. The Union techs who built it were clever as hell, but they still have to adhere to the laws of physics. Keeping the stresses on this thing from tearing it all apart, especially in orbit around a high-gravity planet, doesn’t leave a lot a wiggle room.”
“Are you saying you can tell us where to shoot?”
“Yes, sir…I think so.”
“Fritzie, you beauty! Why didn’t you just say that?”
* * *
“Thunder” Jamison’s fighter was handling like a pig. He had no idea how Captain Eaton’s crews had hauled the five-ton plasma torpedo casings to the bay, over the scattered wreckage of the rail system that usually did it, but he was definitely impressed. They hadn’t been able to complete the refits, and the setups had a definite half-finished quality to them, a fact made clear with every buck and kick the fighter made as he tried to guide its course. If he’d been up against enemy interceptors, his small strike force of twenty-two refitted fighters might as well have been a wing of floating coffins. But the Union fighters had all been destroyed, and Intrepid’s makeshift attack wing had a clear line on the enemy station.
Jamison figured things were likely to get bad in close. The cumbersome, partially-converted bombers were hard enough to handle in open space…he couldn’t imagine trying to run evasive maneuvers in them. But Dauntless and Intrepid needed all the help they could get. The attack on the station had been a losing effort so far, the battleships incapable of inflicting enough damage on their targets. Twenty-two plasma torpedoes were a powerful addition to the effort, and Jamison and his people had precise targeting instruction. If Commander Fritz was right, and if his people could get past the enemy defenses and launch their weapons, the assault could be the difference between success and failure. Between survival and death.
“Commander Jamison.”
He thought he recognized the voice on the comm, but he had to check the readout to convince himself. “Captain Barron, sir.” He hadn’t expected to hear from Dauntless’s captain.
“I just wanted to wish you guys luck. If Commander Fritz is right, and if you and your pilots can pull this off, we just might be able to come out of this on top…and stop the Union offensive dead in its tracks while we’re at it.”
“Yes, sir. We’ll do everything we can, Captain. Whatever it takes.”
“I know you will, Thunder. Now get it done.”
A surge of energy shot through Jamison, even beyond what he’d already felt. He couldn’t let the captain down. He wouldn’t. Not if it took everything he had left. Not if it took his life.
“Let’s go, bombers. Beginning final attack runs. You’ve all got your assignments, and you know where you’re supposed to hit. I don’t need to tell any of you how important this is. One torpedo each, dead on the mark…and then back to the officers club. Are you with me?”
The response over the main channel was almost deafening. He had twenty-one pilots plus himself, every one of them hardened veterans. If they couldn’t do it, no one could.
He directed his fighter toward the station, doing all he could with his sluggish controls to confound the enemy point defense. He was flying directly into a firestorm of laser blasts, but he managed to avoid them all, driving ever closer to his target. The station was on his display, a small white light marking his target area. Fritz had been clear about what he was looking for…and she had been brutally honest that nothing but a dead on shot would get it done. He still found it hard to believe they could blow apart something as massive as the station by hitting it at specific points, but he also knew better than to argue engineering with Fritz.
He saw a flash just outside his cockpit window, a laser blast barely missing his ship. That was close…
He brought his ship around and hit the throttle, thrusting right at the station. This was the most dangerous part. He couldn’t swerve or mix up his vector as he had done on the way in. This was about targeting, about launching his plasma torpedo right at the designated spot. He gripped the throttle tightly, adjusting his aim. Then he launched the weapon.
He pulled away as quickly as h
e could after the torpedo had cleared its moorings…but he wasn’t fast enough. A laser blast took his fighter behind the cockpit, near the engine. It wasn’t a direct hit, but it cost him his thrust, and from the hissing sound in his ears, his life support as well.
He took one last look at his display, watching the torpedo, now a ball of super-heated plasma, heading right toward the bullseye. Bang! It slammed hard into the station’s hull, exactly where Fritz had told him to put it. He felt a burst of excitement, followed by fear as he realized his air was almost gone. He sealed up his survival suit and snapped his helmet in place. He wouldn’t have long out in space, perhaps an hour and a half. And he couldn’t imagine how Intrepid could get a rescue shuttle out here, this close to the enemy.
He thought for an instant that maybe it was better to die here, in his fighter, than floating in the cold blackness of space. But Jamison wasn’t a quitter. He hadn’t lived his life that way, and he wasn’t about to die that way. He reached out and grabbed the emergency latch, pulling hard.
The roof of the fighter, what was left of it anyway, blasted off. Jamison was sucked out by depressurization and thrown into the velvety blackness. He was just close enough to see the station, a spec in the distance. And he saw his fighter too as it careened away from him, almost the entire rear of the ship blasted away, a gaping hole where his engines had been.
Well, Jake, my friend…I was worried about you, but maybe you’re in better shape than I am now. I hope you made it, brother…one of us should…
Chapter Forty-Five
Bridge
CFS Dauntless
Varus System
308 AC
“It’s working. By the eleven hells, it’s working!” Barron was standing in the middle of the bridge, as he had been for the past hour. Dauntless had taken a hard hit from the enemy mega-laser, and it had sent him careening across the deck and slamming into a bulkhead. But he’d just gotten up and brushed himself off, returning defiantly to his position, not a word from him or anyone else about his unintended lesson in why regulations required officers to be strapped in under battle conditions. Now, he was so excited, he doubted if he could have sat still, even if he’d wanted to.