Battle of Sol

by Lee Guo

  He eyed the battle map. So what should he do now? Now that the enemy had created two new battlecruisers specifically for the task of taking down his fighters? He… he had to order his fighters to avoid them as much as possible. Yet, could they? He checked the range on the flak cannons on those two battlecruisers and cursed. The flak cannons had a range of over 200,000 kilometers!

  He massaged his chin and sighed. His fighters would just have to eat it up on their way back, that or take the long way around the enemy’s forward fleet partition.

  Cockpit, Fighter 004, on top of the enemy fleet, Alpha Centauri System

  “We made it, fly boys!” yelled Beta Wing’s Wing Commander Jerome Bottis on the net. “Now, let’s launch our payload on those superdreadnoughts, and kick their ass!”

  “Yehaa!” said Maniac. “Let’s do this!”

  “Roger!” Trevor yelled back into the net. It had been a long struggle, but they were finally here ‒ on target. Oh, they had taken some terrible losses from flak cannons and point defense laser beams from several destroyers and frigates they had passed… A full 15% of their squadron hadn’t made it. But now they were finally here. Right on top of those superdreadnoughts at the far rear of the enemy fleet’s formation.

  It was payback time.

  “Bombs away!” yelled a couple of voices.

  “Bombs away!”

  Trevor watched on his cockpit map display as a dozen bombs ‒ very short-range antimatter warheaded missiles ‒ sped forward towards enemy superdreadnoughts A1 and A2. The superdreadnoughts fired back with their own collection of flak cannons and point defense lasers, of course ‒ but the short-range missiles were moving at close to 0.65 c. Although none of that kinetic energy would transfer to explosive energy when the bombs hit, a natural outcome due to way the Yatimis Miniature sliding drive worked, the payloads in those antimatter warheads would create an explosion of more than 500 megatons of TNT. It would devastate the superdreadnoughts if they hit.

  Trevor ‘Sandy’ Gray watched in satisfaction as three, no, four, short-range bombs hit the forward-most enemy superdreadnought and wham! The blinding explosion created craters in the superdreadnought’s armor. Fires spread throughout the target’s hull, and massive shockwaves of secondary explosions gushed out of its exterior. One could only imagine what happened inside those superdreadnoughts, especially near the points of detonations.

  As more bombs hit their target, the superdreadnaughts finished forming a wall and collectively counterfired with their flak cannons and point defense lasers to make sure as little as possible of the human fighters got away from that encounter—

  “Sandy, what are you doing? Launch your bombs and get out of here!” yelled Wing Commander Jerome Bottis.

  “I got an idea,” replied Trevor on the wing net. “Hang on, Bozeman. I’m gonna try something heroic! You get out while you can!”

  “No, Sandy! Don’t do it! You’ll never make it out alive! Fire off your bombs and get out of here with the rest of us or I’ll have your head!”

  “Hang on!” said Trevor. “It’ll only take a little bit more time!”

  Trevor angled his fighter and sped forward at maximum velocity ‒ past the superdreadnought that fired canisters of flak at his wing ‒ and he kept zooming forward at 0.5c until he was behind the superdreadnought designated A1, and then he aimed his missiles at A1 ‒ Bull’s eye! ‒ He tapped the fire button. All missiles, launch!

  Four of his short-range antimatter warhead missiles sped forward at Superdreadnought A1 at point blank range ‒ around ten thousand kilometers. One of the bombs were taken out by the superdreadnought’s flak cannons. Another was somewhat scorched by the enemy’s point defense lasers, but continued forward, boosted by its Yatimis Miniature Sliding Drive… until all three of them hit - BANG! BANG! ‒ right into the superdreadnought’s main drive ring.

  A1’s main sliding drive ring exploded as the equivalent of 1.5 gigatons of TNT smashed through its armor and into its inner structure. As its drive ring collapsed, so did the power conduits that led to it. The power conduits bled energy, which added to the secondary explosions. A1 suddenly stopped moving ‒ sliding ‒ and was dead in space. One, two ‒ no, three ‒ more explosions burst from inside A1 near its primary power core, and a major portion of its aft hull careened off its main hull so that A1 broke in two.

  “Waaahooo!” yelled Trevor ‘Sandy’ Gray. “Take that, you Argonan scum! Scratch one superdreadnought!”

  “Show off!” said the voices in the wing net.

  Trevor Gray angled his fighter on a course that led back to his carrier… with a wide smile on his face. Everyone ought to remember that one for a long time!

  Bridge, Federation Starship Yorktown, above the wormhole to Sol, Alpha Centauri System

  Sector General Yamato grinned and pumped his fists into the air as he observed his fighters’ bomb strikes go into the enemy’s capital ships. Five of the enemy’s ‘standard’ battlecruisers failed to maintain formation and fell away from the enemy fleet. A full 14 of them had been hit by his fighters’ short-range missiles. As for the enemy superdreadnoughts, three were in what was generally termed ‘critical’ damage state and were gushing fires from their underbellies. One of them had exploded into pieces, although Yamato had no idea how this happened or who did it.

  As for the enemy’s Titans, both were still healthy, having shrugged off the bomb strikes from three human fighter wings without showing any damage to their propulsion drive nor their power generation capabilities. Boy, the enemy’s Titans were tough!

  Yamato eyed the damage reports on the enemy fleet with high hopes and high expectations. Still, it was not as high a damage output as he might have hoped, had he had a fresh fighter force that wasn’t nearly decimated by the enemy’s two flak battlecruisers.

  Then… when he gazed at the total losses to his fighter force, he shuddered at the numbers. There was no way to go around it without admitting the facts. He had lost over 50% of his fighter force to the enemy’s dual flak battlecruisers as well as their screening elements like destroyers and frigates. Yamato was devastated by the loss of crews and pilots but he wasn’t hurt to the point where he lost hope in the battle. The fighters and their pilots were expendable. They could be easily replenished because the crews could be easily trained and their total tonnage was small compared to that of the carriers and capital ships within his fleet. In other words, the fighters themselves could easily be created by the remaining industrial might of the human star federation.

  However, a loss rate of 50% did mean that he wouldn’t be able to rely on his fighter force as tactically as he would like in the remaining battle, yet to take place.

  He sat there, in the aft of the flag bridge, and nodded his head. He had to be happy with what had already been accomplished. Even if he wasn’t happy, he had to be settled with it. There was no time for regrets or what might-have-happened had he given orders differently. He needed to concentrate on his next orders because as much as he wanted to ruminate on what had already happened, the battle was quickly moving to its next stage.

  He eyed the enemy fleet’s distance from his fleet. Missile range was soon approaching.

  He gazed at his 32 missile ships on the battle map. About 54,000 missiles total. If he played his cards right, he might actually be able to win this.

  “All missile ships, open flaps!” he commanded. “Begin main start-up sequence on all missiles’ Yatimis drives!”

  Of course, he was well aware the enemy would be doing the same to their missiles at this very moment ‒ all 100,000 of them. Actually, at this very moment, he didn’t know exactly how many missiles the enemy had. Some of his intel advisers estimated a low of 80,000, others said as high as 150,000. It was all guessing. Since the last battle had been around 100,000, and since the enemy fleet had probably restocked on missiles since then, Yamato guessed that around 100,000 was a good number of what he’d be facing.

  He eyed the enemy fleet… while making checks on which en
emy warships would be targeted by each batch of missiles within his arsenal. He would definitely take out some of the enemy’s screening frigates and destroyers that got in the way of his missiles, but he knew his main target was still the enemy’s capital ships. He also knew that he had to take out ‒ if he could ‒ both of the enemy’s flak battlecruisers. If he didn’t, they’d simply rain fire on his missiles and none of them would get through.

  When he was done cross checking and making his last pre-launch updates, he sat back and relaxed. Even if his current targeting priorities wasn’t optimal, he could change them while the missiles were in route.

  He gulped. “All missiles,” he said at last, “power Yatimis drives to full and advance!”

  **

  Throughout the human fleet, all 32 missile ships ejected all 54,820 missiles from their external and internal missile racks. Each missile was powered by standard Yatimis sliding drives and sped forward towards the enemy fleet at around 0.65 c.

  The enemy fleet did the same for its 121,080 missiles ‒ all of which exited the enemy fleet’s 60 missile ships. The enemy missiles headed towards the human fleet at 0.7 c.

  At the same time, both fleets formed anti-missile defense formations. The Argonan fleet pulled most of its destroyers to a point directly in front of its battlecruisers and superdreadnoughts. Its frigates formed another defensive surface in front of its destroyers.

  The human fleet did the same.

  However, the enemy moved its two extra flak battlecruisers into the front of its frigates to take most of the blow from the human missiles…

  Bridge, Federation Starship Yorktown, above the wormhole to Sol, Alpha Centauri System

  Sector General Yamato gazed at the holomap. 121,000 missiles! How did they get so many missiles?

  Yamato ran his fingers through his hair. Damn, this is a terrible miscalculation.

  I never thought they’d have so many missiles. Where had they come from? Had the new missiles come from the enemy’s supply caravan through the 5th wormhole entrance to Alpha Centauri? If so, how did they manage to resupply their missile ships so fast while their fleet was still in transit towards the Sol gate?

  Or… had those additional missiles supply ships been right behind their fleet the whole time even while we fought it out right above Worber’s World?

  Yamato stared at all 121,000 new dots that had appeared right inside the enemy’s fleet. He realized that he could take on 100,000 missiles, but 120,000 missiles were probably too much. His fleet did not have the shielding and countermeasures to take down enough of those 120,000 missiles before the remainder of those missiles surpassed his point defenses and smashed into his ships.

  Damn! A terrible miscalculation!

  What do I do? What do I do?

  He eyed the entire map in front of him. There’s nothing I can do. I simply do not have enough screening frigates and destroyers in front of my capital ships to shoot down all those extra 20,000 missiles.

  He supposed that if he had what the enemy had, which was two extra flak battlecruisers, he might stand a better chance. As it was, he could only hope on fate and the gods of luck to help him combat the enemy’s extra 20,000 missiles. What he needed was extraordinary precision and efficiency in his anti-missile defense screens ‒ his screening destroyers and frigates ‒ to take down that big missile wave so by the time it reached his capital ships, his capital ships would have an easy time taking down the remainder of the missiles that had gotten through.

  And if that extra efficiency didn’t happen, then he would have to suffer the damage to his capital ships…

  Cockpit, Fighter 004, in transit back to the human carriers, Alpha Centauri System

  “Damn, that’s a lot of missiles,” said Maniac. “What do you think, guys? Think we can take some of them down before they reach our fleet?”

  Trevor’s heart agreed with Maniac. Even a bit of his logic agreed, too.

  Wing Commander Jerome Bottis cut in, “You know as well as I do that we can’t do that. The moment we entangle with those missiles is the moment we’ll become targets to our own destroyers’ flak fire. We’ll suffer too much damage to our own numbers… and no matter how much damage you think we can cause to the enemy’s missile numbers, a fighter is still much more valuable than a missile. We can’t do this. I want to do this. But we can’t. So… nobody deviate. All birds must continue heading back towards our carriers.”

  Trevor thought about it for a moment. “Are you sure, sir?” interjected Trevor. “It’ll still be 8 minutes before the enemy missiles reach the extreme range of our fleet’s flak cannons. We have 8 minutes to take out as many missiles as we can.”

  “Yeah, Sandy. I realize my mistake. What you say is true,” admitted Bottis. “But you have to realize that we’ll be fighting missiles with fighters. Our shields can’t withstand even one blow from their standard shipkiller missile. If the enemy commander decides to sacrifice some of his missiles to take down some of our birds, we’ll be dead meat. We can’t sacrifice birds for missiles on a one to one ratio. Maybe 1 to 20, but not one to one, which is what will happen. And remember, their missiles are faster than our birds.”

  Trevor didn’t say anything. He thought about what the Wing Commander said. After a while, he said, “You’re right, sir. I understand.”

  The communication net went silent after that.

  Trevor sat in his cockpit, watching his map display as all the tiny enemy missiles headed towards the human fleet, and most likely his own carrier Yorktown. Worst thing was, he knew he couldn’t do a thing about it…

  **

  It took only 4 minutes for the human missile wave to crisscross paths with the enemy missile wave. Since it was near impossible for a missile to hit a missile, there was silence throughout battlespace, as neither side’s missiles detonated to kill off an opposing side’s missiles. And then, a minute later, all missile waves, both human and enemy, stopped entangling with the missiles from the opposite sides and each headed in their preset trajectories straight for the opposing ships.

  Even though all missiles were launched in roughly the same time, the Argonans’ missiles were faster, so they hit the human battlefleet first. 121,080 enemy missiles screamed down on the human fleet. The moment they entered flak range, the human destroyers and frigates opened up with their flak cannons and point defense lasers. A hail of laser beams and exploding flak canisters stormed into the path of the enemy’s missiles. Since the human destroyers and frigates were in close-formation together, the wall of anti-missile counterfire was very thick. And, since unlike human fighters, the enemy’s missiles were not shielded ‒ the Argonan missiles were extremely vulnerable to anti-missile fire.

  They fell in waves. Walls of flak fragments destroyed some of the missiles. Walls of continuous laser beams gutted the others. The enemy missiles themselves were very fragile, so the slightest damage caused them to suffer drive failure or premature detonation. Out of 121,080 missiles that entered the human anti-missile screens, only 9,850 made it past that same wall of doom created by the human destroyers and frigates.

  But 9,850 missiles were still a lot, and they screamed down on the vital targets of their long path towards the human fleet ‒ the human fleet’s capital ships.

  The human fleet’s 29 Artemis class Battlecruisers and 8 Warhammer class superdreadnoughts opened up with their own hail of anti-missile fire. Again, walls of exploding flak canisters and anti-missile point defense laser fire smashed into the survivors of the earlier anti-missile screens. Again, missile after missile was taken down.

  But once the survivors of the original 9,850 missiles reached their targets, or even reached proximity detonation range of their targets, that was it ‒ the end for these Argonan missiles. Success.

  Out of 9,850 missiles that entered the human capital ship’s counterfire, only 420 directly struck their targets. The other 1,040 missiles that hadn’t fallen off course… or prematurely detonated… had proximity detonated. The result: the equivalent of
66,000 megatons of TNT smashed into the shields and hull armor of the human capital ships. This damage was spread out throughout the human fleet.

  Some of the human battlecruisers and superdreadnoughts lost their shields. Others received hull damage, which varied from minimal to terrifying. Yet, others suffered no hull damage as their shields completely absorbed the blasts.

  A total of three battlecruisers lost control of their power cores and suffered power failure. They were as good as dead. Seven battlecruisers suffered critical damage to their frontal hulls, but since most of their drive rings were behind their forward armor, it was heaven sent that they didn’t suffer drive failure. A total of 14 out of 29 Artemis battlecruisers had fully lost their shields, and a total of 3 out of 8 Warhammer superdreadnoughts fully lost theirs as well. It did not bode well for the capital-ship-to-capital-ship battle to come. Luckily, only one of the Warhammers had suffered serious damage to its forward hull. Not enough to be life-threatening yet, but that would soon change when the ship to ship engagement began.

  Then the human missile waves hit the enemy fleet.

  Bridge, Federation Starship Yorktown, above the wormhole to Sol, Alpha Centauri System

  Sector General Yamato eyed his displays. He saw the damage reports from all his ships, especially his capital ships, and he shrugged.

  The damage is actually not as bad. At least, it’s not as bad as it could have been.

  Why?

  Yamato considered it odd how the enemy solely targeted capital ships instead of his carriers and smaller warships such as destroyers and frigates. If any of those missiles had aimed for his smaller screening warships, it probably would have prevented that frigate or destroyer from being able to pump out anti-missile fire ‒ as a result, such a strategy would have allowed more of the enemy’s missiles to survive the anti-missile fire wall from his smaller screening ships.