"The British were stubborn. They fought in large groups of fighters, unwieldy and clumsy. There was a German fighter pilot, one of their high-ranking generals and also a top ace, who broke tradition. He introduced the finger four, a formation of two fighters in a flight, two flights to a formation. They hit the British with this new tactic, and the Germans clobbered the British pilots. Both planes were excellent, like our Asps and the Mongol Zhangs. Sir, there's an old proven rule of battle: Never fight the other man's fight. You'll get your butt waxed every time you do.
Buck Rogers
because you've given the advantage to the enemy.
"I've been studying Zhang maneuvers and systems and talked to all the crews I could, including Wilma, here. The way they describe the Zhang pilots, they're wide open, suckers for a finger-four formation, especially since the last pilot in that formation is always ready to knock off a pursuing fighter. He protects the formation. It works."
"Have you tried out this scheme with anyone but Deering?"
"Yes, sir. We teamed up with that brother-and-sister combo, Mari and Adrian Sceptre. They're experienced, natural pilots, and they don't have enough sense to be scared when they should be. Their whole philosophy is attack. We've practiced the finger four against formations of up to sixteen Asps, playing the part of the Mongols, shooting with photon rays to register hit scores."
"And . . . ?"
Wilma spoke up for the first time. "Sir, we blitzed the hell out of them. We scored eleven direct hits—they would have been kills had we used the hard lasers or the disintegrator beams."
"How many of your four did you lose?"
"One, sir. And that would have been damaged, not destroyed."
Blackwell rubbed her chin, poring over every bit of what she'd heard. Speedboat had enough Asps to free eight fighters from their regular patrols and scout attack formations of three Asps in a group.
"How long will it take to train the rest of the Asp pilots?"
"I hope I haven't stepped on any toes, sir, but they've all flown several missions using this formation. In two or three days, they'll be as good as any I've seen. You have some really fine fighter jocks aboard."
Blackwell smiled. "My toes are fine, Rogers, but you did bypass command structure."
"Sir, you've been tied up day and night."
"I know very well what I've been doing, Rogers. Your actions are understandable, even commendable. Proceed with your program, but let there be no interference with the escort missions to protect the heavier ships."
"Yes, sir!" Buck and Wilma chorused.
"Dismissed," Blackwell said curtly, but her demeanor was warm.
A Life in the Future
"Uh, sir . . . one more thing?" Buck asked, treading lightly.
"Rogers, what the blue blazes do you want now?"
"Sir, I've been meeting with your ordnance lead teams."
"Get with it, Rogers! Are you trying to talk the Mongols into a stupor?"
"No, sir. But I have a request that must have your approval."
"Keep it short and sweet, Mister."
Buck meant to keep it that way. He had discovered a serious flaw in the offensive armament of both sides, and he wanted to make changes in his teams of Asp fighters before they sortied out to Mars. "I'd like to modify the armament on the Asps. I have some ideas about improving our firepower. I've met with Dave Swigert, your chief ordnance man, and—"
"I know who he is," Blackwell interrupted, her brow furrowed. "What's your point?"
Swigert agrees with my changes, sir."
"Rogers, I haven't time to go into that kind of detail. But Swigert has served with me for twelve years, and he's the best ordnance man in the business. If he agrees with you, go ahead. You've got my permission. Carte blanche. But don't bother me with any more questions or requests! Dismissed!"
Buck grinned as he and Wilma rode a fast subsurface electric railcar to the main workshop of the Armstrong lunar base. "I never thought you'd get around to asking her," Wilma said.
"Like everyone else, there's a doorway into the mind," Buck answered. "The finger-four formation really caught her attention. Blackwell's an old fighter pilot."
"I didn't know that," Wilma told him.
"I found out everything I could about her, at least as far as her combat record was concerned. She took some heavy losses in big melees with the Asps against the Zhangs. I watched her face closely. If she'd have understood that kind of formation a long time ago, Wilma, many of her closest friends, including her husband, would be alive today. But they're not. So she went back in her mind to those days when they were getting the hell kicked out of them. Any suggestions to redress old wrongs were welcome. So was my recommendation."
Buck Rogers
"But . . . you never did explain to her what you and Dave Swigert are planning."
"I didn't have to. One step after another. Even if she didn't have full confidence in my ideas about weapons, she trusts Swigert completely. So if he goes along with me on this, she'll back it all the way. Hey, we're almost there. Swigert will be waiting for us in the weapons modification center."
Dave Swigert looked up from the innards of a disintegrator beam cannon, his dark, bushy eyebrows and thick mustache contrasting with the gleaming glass and artanium and plastic materials of the space weapon. An unlit cigar stub jutted from his lips. A big man with thick arms and a bull neck, he had the fingers and touch of a surgeon, but you had to see the man work to realize his magical dexterity with complicated mechanisms.
Buck and Wilma stood by the workstand. Swigert didn't say a word or even look up, but they knew he was aware of their presence. Courtesy in the midst of delicate adjustments was virtually impossible, and they were all aware of that fact of life. Finally Swigert rose slowly, holding a hand pressed against his back. "This leaning over is gonna kill me someday," he grumbled. "Do me, will ya?"
"Take the position, hotrock," Buck told him. Swigert stepped away from the table and stood straight up, arms half-raised, as Buck moved in close, face-to-face, then wrapped his arms about Swigert's lower back, adjusting his fists until his knuckles pressed against the other man's backbone. "Now!" Buck shouted, and before Swigert could change position, Buck tightened his grip to almost a crushing hold. The craaack-pop! of bones jostled back into place brought a gasp of pain to Swigert, and then a smile creased his face. "You shoulda been a doctor," he told Buck. "I feel terrific. No pain."
"The sawbones would give you pills," Buck told him.
"Or a few shots in your tender spots," Wilma offered.
"Or two weeks of total bed rest," groused Swigert. "Okay, Ace, did the Dragon Lady buy your program?"
"She did. I just wonder if we have the time to get it fabri-
A Life in the Future
cated, tested, and installed in the next six days."
"Miracles take time. Fortunately, since you took your big sleep, we got miracles by the bucket. I ran your description back to Niagara Central. The computers there in the big gun department have the scoop on just about ever3d:hing ever made that was designed to go bang when you pull the trigger. We wanted the Madsen Mark Nine, right?"
"That's it."
"They had everything, right down to the alloys, assembly, operation—hell, everything, including cutting metal and parts and putting it all together. How many do you want, soldier boy?"
"Eight Asps, two Madsens per fighter. That's sixteen."
"Hey, Wilma, give your buddy a cigar. He can count." Swigert scowled at Buck. "How many spares?"
"Let's go for four. We'll take them aboard Speedboat and have them ready. What about ammo?"
"No sweat. That also was in the computers. They've already gone past first metal cutting and they're into assembly. It'll take three days to finish everything, one day to transfer the stuff here from Earth, one day to install and test. That gives you three days more before we shove off for the big red ball in the sky."
"The what?" Wilma asked.
"Mars," Swiger
t said casually. "If you don't like red, color it orange. The scoop we've been getting down makes it looks like the Big One is finally at hand."
"It is," Buck confirmed. "You heard Hasafi."
"Sure did. I like the old girl. If she could, she'd be right with us flying one of these things. By the way, does Blackwell know what we're doing?"
"She's busy. She didn't ask. Whatever is okay with you got the thumbs up from her."
"There's gonna be a lot of surprised people out there," Swigert said.
"Let's hope so," Buck told him. "Especially in the Zhangs and the big stuff"
"We've been so buried in disintegrator rays and lasers and guided torpedoes that no one's had time to go back into the history books." Swigert clapped a beefy hand on Buck's shoulder. "Sometimes it pays to dredge up the cavemen from the past. Like you," he added.
Buck Rogers
"One more thing, Jack."
"Which is?"
"Except for the Asp crews and the armorers, let's keep what we're doing quiet. The fewer who know about this, the less chance there is for the Mongols to find out what we're doing."
"Ain't no Mongols here," Swigert reminded him.
"Sure, but the walls have ears."
'Tou've got a suspicious mind."
"Absolutely. Are you telling me we haven't any skunks in the woodpile?" Buck asked.
"Who? Me?" Swigert held a hand over his heart. "I'm just an innocent babe. But you're right. Okay, we'll stay under wraps as much as we can. If the Mongols get word of our little caper before we tie into each other, we'll know it didn't come from us. Now get outta here and let me get back to work. I'll make the first test flight with you six days from now."
"Done."
They reached Mars cloaked in an enormous force field that concealed them from the Mongol radar and other detectors. Six separate formations deployed toward Mars, spreading out into a wide flanking approach that had the Mongols convinced the Amerigo forces were plain crazy to waltz right into the firepower of the Mongol spacecraft and surface weaponry.
The force fields worked for only two days before they began to fade. At that point, accelerated laser beams were cutting through the diffusion fields and focusing clearly on the incoming Amerigo fleets.
Or so they thought. Admiral Frank Bemis had four of the massive dreadnoughts to engage the Mongol heavy spacecraft. Outnumbered seven to four, it seemed Bemis was placing his ships and their crews in severe jeopardy. He counted on the Mongol concept of battle—engage, fight, kill, destroy. Finesse simply wasn't in their plan for battle.
Their very aggressiveness was the Achilles Heel of the Mongols, Bemis had planned carefully and with enormous effort for this titanic battle, leaving nothing to chance and counting on the strange psychology of the Mongols.
"They should have stayed on horseback," he told his crews. "That's how they fight best. Cloaks and ruses simply aren't their game."
A Life in the Future
Instead of merely four, eleven great Amerigo dreadnoughts steadily approached Mars. Four ships were those of the Bemis force. The remaining seven were huge inflatable replicas of the dreadnoughts. In the vacuum of space, covered with steel mesh fabric and blown up to full size, the hollow "dreadnoughts" were enormous decoys with enough weapons aboard to fire intermittently. Their low-powered thrusters propelled what were virtually space balloons directly at the waiting Mongol force.
Firing steadily, the eleven ships closed on the Mongol line. They were met with withering firepower from Admiral Yesulai, whose crews cheered lustily as one after another of the dreadnoughts burst into flames. Little did they suspect that the fires were set off by a distant microwave command from the real ships commanded by Bemis. At the height of the battle, sixteen Asp fighters in a flying wedge attacked from the opposite side of the Mongol line. It had all the earmarks of a perfect double-sided attack, cutting the Mongol fleet in half
Within twenty minutes, seven decoy dreadnoughts floated helplessly in space, burning furiously. At the height of their cheering, the Mongols spun their big guns around to cut down the attacking Asps. No one had ever seen the nuclear-powered fighters flying such insane approach paths, whipping from side to side and up and down. It should have been obvious to the Mongols that no human being, no matter how well protected, could withstand the crushing g-forces of such violent maneuvers.
The Mongols began to discover this when their own Zhang fighters gave pursuit. Pilot after pilot lapsed into unconsciousness as he tried to lock on to the erratic and senseless flying of the Asps. As the Asps rushed in against the Mongol dreadnoughts, their disintegrator and laser rays firing ineffectively, they closed the distance swiftly.
The disintegrator rays were virtually useless against the massive armored shields and the defensive force fields of the Mongol dreadnoughts. The rays first had to penetrate the defending force field, losing much of their energy to make it through the dense hulls. By the time the rays struck the thick armor of a dreadnought, they lacked the power to disrupt the molecular bonds of the metal alloy hulls and penetrate to the
Buck Rogers
ship's interior. Yet the effect was frightening, for even the best-constructed vessel could suffer an unexpected breach to be further exploited by the attacking Americans.
"Buck, it's working! We're getting through!" Wilma's voice carried excitedly to Buck in his Asp. Before him loomed the huge bulk of a Mongol dreadnought, its hull and flanks alive with the sparkling, deadly blasts of defending weapons. Off to his left, slightly behind him, an Asp was suddenly transformed from a sleek space fighter to a blazing tangle of junk, the victim of a direct hit by a defending heavy disintegrator pulse.
Aboard the Mongol heavies, alarms sounded constantly. The big ships of the line were still exchanging fire with Admiral Bemis's four dreadnoughts. The Asp fighters were somehow evading and getting through the defending Zhang formations.
Yet the battle's outcome was far from decided. "Wilma! Send in your remote now! Full throttle, and set the computer to a hard, curving approach. Make it from below."
"Roger, Buck . . ." Wilma eased off on her power to make sure she wouldn't lose consciousness. She switched her controls to remote, cutting out her own maneuvering ability for several seconds. When she moved her controls now, the response came from an unmanned Asp fighter, crammed with high explosives and deadly pyroxin, a chemical that splashed wildly and burned any material it touched.
There was no one aboard the Asp. Obeying its electronic controls from Wilma's fighter, the Asp rocketed in at top speed, ignoring multiple hits from defending guns. A withering blast smashed the cockpit section, destroying the control systems.
But it was too late. Unmanned, uncontrolled, hurtling forward from its own momentum, the pilotless Asp smashed into the dreadnought's hull, breaching the three outer layers, covering a large section of the hull with the intensely burning pyroxin.
"Dead hit!" Wilma shouted, her voice carrjring to all the other manned Asps.
"Iminez! Massey!" Buck sang out. "We've got a hull breach! Follow it up with max speed attacks! Go!"
One robot-controlled Asp made it in, striking directly where
A Life in the Future
the first ship had blasted into the dreadnought's hull. Flames exploded within the Mongol ship, severing control lines and systems. Slowly the huge vessel began to spin about its own axis, out of control.
"Go after that ship!" Buck ordered. Four fighters went in in tight formation, targeting their disintegrator beams on the hull breach. Two more manned Asps came apart under heavy defensive fire, but the remaining two poured a steady stream of disintegrator beams and laser fire into the heavy vessel. Great sections of the hull were cracking, splitting open, revealing intense flames within.
"Break! Break!" Every Asp pilot heard the frantic warning as a swarm of Zhang fighters, until now confused by the wild gyrations of the Amerigo ships, raced in for the kill.
"This is Asp Leader," Buck called calmly. "Lead fighters, go in a
s close as possible to the damaged areas of that battlewagon, decelerate, and make a tight turn around that thing. Stay as close as possible to the hull. They can't hit you that close in, and the Zhangs can't fire for fear of hitting their own ship. All hands, ignore the dreadnought. Take evasive action."
He moved his own fighter in tight, almost scraping the surface of the great battlewagon as he came under and up, slower now. Wilma stayed glued to his side and behind him in perfect wingman formation. Buck glanced behind him. It was working. The Zhang fighters stayed in hot pursuit, but most had stopped firing. They were too close, and they were in peril from the very ship they were defending, whose gunners were firing at anything moving.
"Force Two, Force Two! Do you read Asp Leader?"
"Got you, Leader."
"We're coming up and around. Come in with the finger four. Make all attacks in formation. Do not break your finger-four formations. Move in fast, now."
Buck's fighters swept up, around, and above the stricken dreadnought. As they came into sight of the attacking Zhangs, the Mongol fighters rushed in for the kill. Right behind them, at maximum speed, came the remaining Asps, firing from maximum range. Brilliant fire beams alerted the Zhang crews. They broke off to the right, starting a wide circling turn that would enable them to make a firing pass at Buck's force, then continue
Buck Rogers
coming around to meet the second group of Asp pilots answering Buck's call.
It was time to use the Madsens, weapons that had been resurrected from wars fought hundreds of years before.
Both the Asps and the Zhangs had energy shields to ward off most of the strikes from the beamed weapons. To be effective the rays and lasers had to hold their fire for several seconds in one spot to break down those defenses. That rarely happened.
Now, however, three Zhang fighters were torn open as if by invisible knives. The Asp fighters splitting into formation strikes were firing weapons that had not been used in eons—Madsen 23-mm cannons, firing a mixture of depleted uranium slugs to punch open their targets, followed by explosive incendiaries that erupted within the Zhang fighters.
Buck Rogers- A Life in the Future Page 30